Annecy

Beautiful weather and the cleanest lake in Europe means it was a morning cycle ride (4 miles) into Annecy, a walk around, lunch in the park, ride back, swim in the lake, beer, wine = A very good day! :-)

Oh, the photo of me holding the world's biggest thermometer is actually the water temp. just before we entered - 19c

Well, as per usual things didn't go according to plan. We arrived at the aire at Aix-les-Bains to find it was packed, so had to just drive past and find a way out of the pretty town without knocking off any Gold Wing rider. For those of you who don't know a Gold Wing is a motorcycle the size of a small country. Every one ever made was in town, but we escaped successfully and headed over to Annecy where we are now camped for a couple of days. From here we will make plans for the coming week.

Photo: Dropping down to Annecy, that lake is getting some swimmers tomorrow!

When we visit a site where the owner doesn't speak English why is it that we both sound like Del Boy when we say "Tres bon, tres bon"?

We had a busy day yesterday, we left the 'unmentionable owners' site just after 8am then racked up 120 miles visiting FOUR sites, a record. We are now down in Artemare at our last one for a few days. We are just a stones throw from Aix-les-Bains and Annecy so once we tidy up a few loose ends this morning we are heading to an aire at the A-L-B.

There's Satnav.................then there's OUR satnav!

9.30pm Wednesday 28th May

This won't get posted for a day or two but here goes anyway.

You know when you have a day at work any somebody really hacks you off? Well we've just had one! No, not the slightest problem with our work colleague/husband/wife/best friend, no no no, this is the campsite owners! If we weren't so inebriated we would pack up and go, but no point in cutting our noses off to spite our faces, so we set our alarm for 7am and hit the road as soon as the barrier lifts.  

Spot the deliberate mistrake

The last entry said we were at Lons les Sauniere in the Franche-Comte region when of course it should have been Lons LE SAUNIER in Jura! Sorry, what day is it? What month are we on?

We woke to gloriously sunny weather and as planned headed south to the campsite at Macon, we decided before we arrived that we wouldn't stay the night so after an hour's assessment we headed northeast to the next at Lons les Sauniere, in the Franche-Comte region. In two days we plan to do our last site of this batch near Aix-les-Bains (we hope you're keeping up here?) when we will take another break and maybe head over to Lake Annecy fora swim and a few days recharging the draining batteries............on us, not Rapi!

Photo - Coffee stop somewhere en route to work

Visiting campsites in lovely weather isn't a BAD way to earn a crust, ok not a full crust, maybe just a crumb or two. Unfortunately it's NOT lovely weather but even when it's wet, the quiet roads, scenic views and endless picturesque villages make it palatable.

We have been bobbing around a slightly 'Austrian-like' area of France between Dijon and Lyon, this is still Burgundy country but so far we have yet to find a vineyard selling wine en vrac (by the bucket). We are off to Macon (of Beaujolais fame) tomorrow, and then............... Brian will work it out over a glass of wine this evening.

The miles are clocking up- 1,900 since leaving home and 10,000 miles in the last 8 months.

200 miles of peage = €44!

That's the bad news, but when you have to get to work, you have to get to work. The good news was that we had 200 miles of traffic free driving on a Saturday, where in England could you do that? We stayed at the 'drive through' aire at Bourges, which is a very picturesque town, hopefully a photo or 2 attached. We say 'drive through' aire as it was on the main race/drunks circuit, and being a Saturday night our sleep was a little disturbed. On a plus note, the young lads doing goodness knows what at 6.40am meant we were on the road at 8.20 heading the 125 miles to our next campsite assessment.

Weather: Warm and sunny

On the Road Again

This morning we leave Amy and Yann's :-( and head east for a few hundred miles. We aren't really sure how far we will get but hope to at least make Bourges (180 miles) and we are breaking our peage rule so will be paying to use motorway! Work recommences when we eventually arrive at our next site just outside Dijon, probably Sunday or Monday.

Oudon

A few photos taken in Oudon over the weekend

Amy and Yann's

At Amy and Yann's for a week, we will probably depart a week today.

Oudon, this morning's walk around the park.

Delayed Photo

Vendome

Cumulative Effect of Wine

We left Angers about 11am planning to tootle towards Oudon and maybe find a pleasant coffee stop overlooking the Loire. No suitable coffee stops found en route so we had the best at Amy's. Lovely to see her and Droops before she went off to work. Yann was on his way home from work so we beat at hasty retreat to the aire so we wouldn't distract him from the mountain of jobs he had to do for our arrival ;-)

Old age or the cumulative effect of wine? In Brian's rather blasé fashion he estimated the distance to our next campsite assessment to be 'about 150 miles'. Over pate and red wine lunch the satnav was programmed and it turns out to be 335 miles, ooops.

Angry of Angers

Well we don't really do angry so let's just say a tad dischuffed. We picked this campsite for our relaxing holiday stay of one night, partly because it had a swimming pool which was open, and free wifi. Having checked in, we find that the pool isn't open yet and the wifi makes dial up seem like lightspeed! On the upside it is wall to wall sunshine, we paid for it with one of our camping cheques and we've just opened a new box of red wine.

And the answer is......

We had an inkling that the answer to the 3pm quiz was going to be F) as Rachel had received a good luck message from a passing seagull which had been on the beer and curry the night before. Why is it that when something spills it seems to increase in volume 10 times?!! We dropped Rapi off at 3pm and were on the road at 4.20pm, all fixed. Our next stop was the aire at Vendome, about 20 miles south of Chateaudun. Quite an upmarket place with the river Loir (not to be confused with Loire) running through it. Just one night there then southwest to a campsite at Angers.

The 3pm Quiz

A) the part hasn't arrived but 'it will be here soon'

B) the part hasn't arrived and 'we don't know where it is'

C) the part HAS arrived but it's the wrong one

D) the part HAS arrived but Rowan has had to go out on an important job

E) the part HAS arrived, is fitted but hasn't made any difference

F) the part HAS arrived, is fitted, works brilliantly and everybody lives happily ever after

The First Day of Holidays

Well, it could've gone better. We set off in a south westerly direction, our intended target being the aire at Chateaudun. After the obligatory Lidl and coffee stops, we were about 8 miles from our destination when the alarm bells started ringing and the 'check engine' sign illuminated on the dashboard. We tootled to the aire, whereupon a series of phone calls followed. The upshot being a drive to the local back street Fiat dealer. After about an hour of just hanging around, a young Rowan Atkinson plugged his laptop into Rapi and after much sighing and head scratching finally concluded that Rapi needed a new thrust bracket flange socket on the kelkenbine, or something like that, it could even have been a flux capacitor. Anyway it didn't take a genius to work out that they wouldn't have one in stock so I rather optimistically, probably influenced by the fact it was one of the few French  phrases I know, suggested 'demain matin'? After much laughter, Rowan said not tomorrow morning but we were to return at 3pm........

The photos- 'Not such a bad place to breakdown'

                         'It wasn't until the photo was developed that Rachel realised she'd        captured a saint'

Another Day, Another Campsite

After 14 sites in 10 days we are starting to get a bit 'campsited out'. At least this is a pleasant one, our last for a week or so. This morning we headed north for 8 miles to have a look around Fontainebleau before arriving at this site. Bri insists on wearing his 'three quarters' despite it being just 11c today, and that was WITHOUT the wind chill! At least it is dry and now we plan our route to Oudon via a few aires, it'll be a nice change :-)

Saturday

If we thought the campsite wasn't particularly well cared for it was positively pristine compared to the town! If France give awards for the 'worst kept town' then Tonnerre must be a front runner. It is difficult to find the right words to describe it, it was scary DURING DAYLIGHT! We both jumped out of our skins when this withered old hand slowly came out from behind one of the creaking window shutters! The place was verging on being derelict with many houses just falling apart. Well, we escaped in the morning without being murdered in our bed and it wasn't long before we reached the vineyards of Chablis and a short tootle to our next site at Joigny. Rachel brewed up on the gas whilst Bri set up the usual 'stuff' outside. This is a nice site despite the haphazard electric hookup supply. We connected to a French 2 pin socket and went off to do our usual 'initial impression' look around. When we got back the van was very hot and there was an uncomfortable burning smell. We noticed, on the little device Neil and Kath gave us, that there was no earth. Aargh, we disconnected the supply immediately and then found a conventional 'europlug' to connect to, opened the windows and then let the van cool down. However, it transpired that it wasn't an electrical issue,  the gas ring was still on! Ooops.

The Early Bird Catches the...................Mosquito!

It was 2.30am when the lights came on and Bri commenced battle with Mohammed the Mozzy. After a pursuit around the van the little 'bleeder' (that's Mohammed not Bri) was nailed in the kitchen. 

On an entirely different note we have now done 1,000 miles since departing CA3 and this is our 10th campsite out of 44. Only 5 more to do before we have our well deserved break and go to see Amy for week. About time we had a holiday!

Champagne to Burgundy

Before we left the heart of champagne country we had to visit where Dom Perignon was the cellar man, at the abbey at Hautvillers, just 2 miles from last night's campsite. We then headed 60 miles south to Troyes en route to burgundy and will be staying the night here. The 2nd photo shows us wading through the bank holiday traffic, yes it's a bank holiday here.

Fill Your Boots!

How to fill a Renault Clio boot. This morning whilst strolling around our present site I bumped into a fisherman chappy who was keen to show me his catch, un pesche chat, yes a cat fish, enough to put me off open water swimming for good!

Wednesday

We departed the 'windy' campsite this morning and did the last 2 in the Paris-Ile de France region before heading to the heart of champagne country at Epernay. This is a municipal site and we feared the worst as some can be a bit old and dodgy (like Bri) but we have been pleasantly surprised! Hopefully we will squeeze some 'tourist' stuff in before departing Dom Perignon's home town. I wonder if it's just coincidence that the adjoining town is named Dizy?

and the winner is..........

Here we see 2 campsites we've visited so far, and your vote goes to?

4 Winds

We are so glad we took Yann's mum's advice and did Paris first. We really enjoy the city but it's not the easiest task to plot a route between the campsites. This is down to a lack of understanding between the satnav and an old person, pass me that flat cap. The good news is we escaped unscathed, but more importantly Rapi did! After the briefest of visits to the campsite at Versailles (a thousand apologies Amy for not visiting the chateau), we successfully negotiated the peripherique and headed East into the countryside. The photo is of the canal opposite the site we stayed at last night, the big black mark on it is a heron just taking off, it had been storking, I mean stalking, us for a while. This morning it was just 25 miles south to the appropriately named Camping des 4 Vents, the least said the better! It's an excellent site so we stay here tonight :-)

Some Photos of our Paris Weekend

If the technology works there should be a few photos on here, most are self explanatory but just a few notes. Point Zero - for those who don't know, all distances in France are measured from here (set in the pavement outside Notre Dame Cathedral) apparently road signs throughout France may show the distance from this point. A quiet Sunday afternoon on the Champs Elysees. Notre Dame with the 'bridge of many padlocks' (not the official name). Wide angle shots of the obvious. I'm not sure in which order the photos will come out so arrange them accordingly.

Sunday - day of rest

After Maison Laffitte we headed closer to Paris for our next campsite by the Bois de Boulogne (3 miles from The Arc de Triomphe). Being so close to all the sights we decided to stay 2 nights even though we had to pay for our 2nd one. We did our 'work' on the Saturday and took Sunday off. On Saturday night some Germans from the campsite gave us 4 free tickets for the Metro. there was a bit of a language problem but we got the gist and thanked them. Maybe Rachel's opinion is changing of the Kaiser Chiefs? Maybe not, only one ticket worked so Rachel was one side of the turnstiles and Bri the other, we'd been sabotaged, obviously unintentionally! Whilst walking if Rachel heard Bri say once 'I ran down here', she heard it a hundred times! Who needs a map when you've run 26.2 miles of the streets ;-). Although we didn't manage a marathon this time, we walked a very respectable 11 miles (still wearing a Garmin for street cred) in glorious sunshine, now Bri resembles an unstruck match. After a tiring but enjoyable day we bought the cheapest bottle of wine on The Champs Elysees (€2.52 would you believe?!) so we can have a well earned glass tonight before work tomorrow at Versailles.

Friday

The measure of a campsite can be summed up with this question 'Would I recommend it to my friends'? The first one categorically NO! The worst site we have ever done, so it will come as no surprise that we didn't take up the offer of a free night. After ticking all the boxes we needed to, we made our escape, following The Seine towards Paris. The 2nd campsite we WOULD recommend to our friends, so hence we are staying the night here in Maisons Laffitte, about 15 miles from the centre of gay Paris.

Tonight's Aire (Thursday)

We have been here twice before and didn't realise it wasn't free! However, this is the first time we've had leccy and use of the showers at the campsite opposite so definately worth the €6.77, AND we've got wifi courtesy of our newly purchased wifi booster aerial, clearly visible on our van (4th along :-))

Thursday

After the calmest of channel crossings we tootled just 20 miles down the coast to our usual free aire at Wissant, then this morning on to Forges-les-Eaux (just off the table). You will be pleased to know that we have found a decent bottle of wine for €1.24, it'll do for lunch anyway. Tomorrow we should be at our first campsite at Mousseaux (not too far east of Paris).