The first thing we hear on waking early on the farm is a cockerel greeting the dawn.   Fair enough – it is a poultry farm. That makes two bird awakenings in a row – I like it. The cuckoo in Nonancourt was the better.  We had a muddy pack up of electricity cables and used the water from the aquaroll to refill the tank.  We would be arriving at the fermette in the afternoon so we were less fussy than typically about packing up – apart from wiping the mud off things.  I can see it is quite a discipline if you are travelling for a length of time.  A cheery wave good bye from the farmer’s wife – it was actually quite a nice stay and we would come back again in the dry.

The route today takes us across country firstly to the amazing pimple on the landscape that is the famous white wine producing town of Sancerre, and then on familiar roads once more to the fermette. We’re on nice little yellow roads now.  Neil has become a cruise control junkie while on the dual carriageways and is slow to relinquish the habit on roads with bends and towns and hills.  I request some braking on long downhill slopes: cruise control does not apply the brakes, just stops applying the accelerator, so the van does gather pace as we descend!

It’s easy to pick a destination and then just drive until you get there.  It’s better to identify interesting or pleasant spots along the way to stop for a break.  Why is it hard to stop once you are rolling?  Force of habit telling you that it is only getting to the destination that matters?  Sometimes that is true, but, doing what we are doing and driving only one or two hours a day, that is not so. We will still arrive in good time to get a pitch.  There is a lake in a forest on our route so we turn off and park in the shade to eat cheese pasties and tomatoes.

We pull into St Franchy and clearly there has been some rain here too.  One possible plan had been to empty the barn and keep Portia in there between trips.  Much carting of ten year’s junk from one outbuilding to another later and we measured up – oh no!  The barn looks huge with its forty foot high beamed roof space: it is wide enough, the door is probably high enough but it is not long enough by about a foot:-(  The doors have to be opened by pushing them inwards a bit to unlatch them before opening fully outwards, meaning we lose about a metre.  Without the bike rack we would be just about OK.  So that plan was abandoned and Portia would just have to pull up on the grass in front of the barn.  It’s on a slight grassy slope.  It had been very wet.  Portia carved some nice muddy grooves in the grass and refused to get her front wheels off the road. It’s only a lane really and very narrow, but the farmer comes up twice a day in her tractor, or occasionally with some other large piece of farm machinery that lives in the barn at the end of the lane, so we have to leave it completely clear. Rolling back down the slope I park her on the flatter verge 20 metres down the road. We will just have to wait for the ground to dry out before we try again.  The weather obliges, the sun starts shining, and a couple of days later all is well – Portia is parked in front of the barn and Neil is eating his lunch in the shade of the (slightly pruned) apple tree.

Things learned:

• Packing up in the wet and mud
  • have cloths and things dedicated to dirty stuff so cables can be wiped
  • supermarket bags-for-life are brilliant, they are big enough to bung things in easily. Don’t bother to buy specialist bags for packing things in tightly and neatly (like our bag that theoretically takes 25 metres of cable!).
• It is hard to readjust from the “two-week holiday” frame of mind.  Take some time to look at the pleasing places along the way – enjoy all the journey.
• the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley*.  Have a fallback plan in case your barn is the wrong size.

*Tae a Moose, Robert Burns,  1785

**Oil painting of cockerel by our neighbour Evlin.

On to a farm stay French style

The first thing we heard on waking early in Nonancourt was a cuckoo calling his way down the river.  Totally entrancing! (Not my picture.)

Cuculus canorus

We had slept completely horizontally on a sloping pitch by finally breaking out the levellers. Easy! As I mentioned  yesterday, we had nabbed the electricity for an hour and now refilled the water tank (100ltrs) plus an extra 40 in the aquaroll for good measure – still worried about running out of power and water!  It was not raining so we took our time preparing to leave and chatted to the French neighbours on the other side who had arrived late, complete with Yorkshire terrier (good choice of dog!).

Timing is important in social encounters – Dave was still around, having driven away to empty his grey water, and he strolled across to say hello. We were in the process of emptying the fully christened toilet down the black water point.   It is hard to keep up polite chat while tipping blue poop down the drain.  The whole process was pretty much a non-event though and, although all things toilet are apparently favourite topics for motorhomers, I will not mention it again unless something exceptional needs recording!

For our third and final stop before arriving home-from-home in Burgundy I had found a France Passion site the other side of, and, in the circumstances, perilously close to, the Loire. Just south-east of Orleans it is a farm with horses, fishing, farm shop, evening meals by request etc – it sounded lovely.  It was a much more interesting drive today as we had left the motorway trajectories and were onto smaller roads passing through towns and villages.  Carefully. It was a bit tense when Stella opted in her usual cavalier fashion for the direct route straight through the centres of both Chartres and Orleans – neither is a large city though and it was not too unnerving.

The proximity of the chosen farm to the Loire was worrying after all the flooding – we knew the road was open but the site may still be very soggy.  Approaching the village the fields either side of the road looked very waterlogged with occasional puddles right across the carriageway.  The farmyard itself looked even soggier.  And more dilapidated than expected.

First impressions – more rusty than rustic, and quite chickeny.  With muddy-footed guinea fowl too. Hmm – my vision of a rustically sophisticated idyll was rapidly fading.  The farmer was very welcoming and friendly though and offered us electricity for 5 euros. Unexpected bonus – FP sites are supposed to be just a place to park with water if you are lucky.  The deal is that you buy some farm produce if you want to, but no obligation. This farm had set up several proper pitches with trees and bushes for privacy and seemed to have some permanent vans on site. Or maybe they are for seasonal workers.  At some muddy distance from the van a bizarre and very damp outbuilding insulated with equally damp straw bales housed a cooker, washing machine, settee and toilet.  Functional but unappealing.  To be fair, with more sun and less  mud it would have been a reasonably pleasant spot.  Closer examination revealed that some of the rusty things formed the beginnings of a kind of open air farm equipment museum.  All around the edge of a couple of fields ancient and interesting pieces of farm machinery were spaced out for viewing – sadly inaccessible in a sea of mud at the moment though.  (Which does not excuse the rusting heaps of other stuff.)

The little shop had a good range of regional delicacies but not stuff produced on the farm.  We bought bread, wine and cheese pasties none of which were homemade and, given the unkempt air of the farm  and commercial products on offer, we decided against booking what I suspected would have been a very average evening meal.   We may of course have missed a poultry-based treat:-(

Grey skies turned to rain and we ducked back inside to spend the rest of the afternoon watching TV. Strange combination of muddy french farm and Four in a Bed bitchery. Snatched another tiny walk round the pens of the many and varied breeds of poultry  before finally being rained off to dine on the sauté of porc we bought yesterday.  This is a good way to eat: €12  for an excellent plate of food for two.  And we can feel we paid our dues to the town that was kind enough to host us for the night.

Things learned:

• 40 litres of water in an aquaroll weighs a ton and has to be lifted in where it threatens to overturn and break things with its weight.  But doesn’t.
• sun is better than rain for the outdoor life
• not much else today

Au revoir Montreuil, bonjour Nonancourt

The rain does not stop overnight:-( It is a nice cosy feeling to make a cup of tea three feet from your bed then climb back in with it while the rain patters on the skylight.  But it does not encourage getting up and running around outside the van to carry out the filling/emptying/charging etc.  The service point is in the coach park adjacent and would mean parking there for 55 minutes to charge up the battery. In fact the batteries look fine according to the figures on the solar panel display.  We have enough water to last us a day or so and the next aire promises all the facilities, including one free electric point. If we get there first we can nab it!

Not only is there a rumoured fuel shortage (which we have seen no sign of) but we are now hearing more on the news about flooding across many parts of northern France, including where we are going. We are definitely being tested by man and nature but, without detailed information, we decide to plough on as planned and play it by ear.

In our satnav-free years we tangled unhappily many times with the extensive marshalling yards in Rouen. Often in the middle of the night.  This time Stella plays a blinder and we sail through! (Not my own photo.)  At one point Neil thinks he sees a flash in the side mirror and we may have been caught driving in a lane banned to vehicles our size for a couple of hundred yards.  Not altogether obvious that is was restricted, nor clear why, but we got out of it promptly.  Now hoping that the French road-fining system does not tie up with DVLA:-(  For the rest of the 2-3 hour journey it is an easy, if not very interesting drive: despite having gone “toll free”, and expecting side roads, there seems to be a good network of free motorways in this area.  We break it with a stop for bread and cheese in a motorway aire and somehow end up parked among the lorries rather than the cars: feel small as we sit at our table staring at the tops of huge wheel arches manoeuvering alongside.

Stella takes us seamlessly to the aire in Nonancourt.  Wow! Even nicer than Montreuil:

The Mairie at Nonancourt

down a side lane to a green and leafy area near the Mairie adjacent to a meandering river.  The pitches are a bit narrow and result in a slight difference of opinion about the giving and receiving of reversing instructions.  Resolved!  The one free electric socket has been nabbed by the one van already there – boo.  But we filled with fresh water for free so can’t complain. There is no toilet at this aire so the time for unfettered use of the toilet has arrived!

The friendly English couple (Pat and Dave) in the other van wander over for a chat.  They are heading north and from them we learn about the seriousness of the flooding of the Loire further south around Orleans and discover the road we need to take tomorrow had been closed. There had been a very, very long queue of lorries going north outside Rouen. It seems all the bridges further south over the Loire were closed yesterday and they had all had to park up for the night further south – including our neighbours who had wild camped in a wood.  The traffic jam seemed to indicate that the bridges were now open and the queue was the result of 24 hours-worth of lorries piling up against the tunnel under Rouen. Pat’s son lives just south of Orleans and she offered to find out the current position.  No offer of a share of the electricity was forthcoming however, and we were too polite to ask. I guess we would have if we had been desperate but the drive down had charged up the batteries nicely.
Nonancourt is lovely, historic small town with half timbered houses along a small river, traiteurs, boulangères and ramparts (we didn’t see the latter). Again, the weather, although not actually raining, did not encourage wandering around.

Our saute of pork with saffron rice for tomorrow is bottom left

We ate the totally delicious lasagne bought yesterday with a tomato salad and bread.  Lasagne can be sliced and successfully reheated slowly in a frying pan with a heat diffuser.  Microwave would have been easier but….not without 240v electricity:-(  I had almost asked Pat for an hour of electricity when she came round with news from her son.  But I chickened out.    The news was good though – all bridges and roads now open.  Well – the ones we were interested in anyway!
We strolled briefly in the lovely landscaped park alongside the river behind the Mairie before the rain came then went to bed. What a privilege!

Things learned:

• a heat diffuser is a good idea.
• should we be more assertive about asking to share free resources?  Early the next morning we nabbed the socket when Dave and Pat left.  Ten minutes later the French camper next to us asked when our time was up, assuming we had paid.  I explained it was free and we would hand it over in 45 minutes, a normal period of time for charging.  He did not seem bothered and they left before we had finished. Felt a bit mean.
• the solar panel works a bit even in dull weather.
• agree reversing gestures and objective in advance.  Don’t be touchy about taking an instruction.  Be polite when issuing an instruction. To someone touchy.