By slow stages….

A final flurry of family visits in York and Bristol and we head for Hull and the overnight Zeebrugge ferry – the quick way to the continent from up north.  OK – we are trying to be economical in our travels and could have driven to Dover and saved quite a few pounds, but we have had a trying few months and it is now so late in the year that we just want to get over to France asap.  In a car the fermette can be reached in a leisurely day’s drive from Zeebrugge; in winter an overnight stop en route is better so as not to arrive in the dark at a stone cold house in the middle of nowhere. In the van we need to make it two overnight stops – but that’s OK – aires are free and we are not pressed for time.

The Pride of Bruges noses into Zeebrugge as the chilly sun rises and we head for Roye in Picardy where the aire is in a car park near the town centre. It is a pleasant and unassuming little town which is nonetheless kind enough to offer us a place for the night and facilities to service our van needs.  A walk around town shows the Christmas festivities are all set up except, being lunch time in France, everything, including the festive funfair, is closed. Portia is parked facing the school and it must be the last day of term – every parent in Roye turned up to collect their child and mayhem ensued in the car park around us for half and hour.  Then I guess they head for the funfair and bright lights for a fluff of candy floss to start the holidays!

Second stop is in familiar territory in Burgundy – the historic city of Auxerre .  An elegant city with a cathedral atop a hill it is the centre of production of Crémant de Bourgogne (champagne method wine made just the other side of the Champagne Appellation Contrôlée boundary – a good buy!). It is a scant couple of hours from the fermette and offers a moho parking (without services) just across the river from the old town.  It was a beautiful evening, spent looking at their elegant Christmas decorations and trying a great big, warm, puffy, cheesy gougère for the first time – and we had a great view over the river to the town.

Big cheesy gougères in the Christmas market in Auxerre. Yum.

Our only significant van-related incident was that the gas ran out at bedtime.  It was a cold night and we needed heating.  This was the original 13kg English bottle and after all our gas issues over the summer we were apprehensive about changing to the new emergency 6kg bottle.  Propitiously, the change went smoothly and the heat came back on.  Phew!

Arriving at the fermette and the ground is frozen solid so Portia drives up the slope to the barn doors without spinning her wheels.  She is oversensitive to mud and wet grass and it has been a struggle getting her up the slight slope in the past.  We had come prepared with some mats for grip but this time we did not need them.

As we hunker down in front of the wood burning stove for what is going to be the best part of a month it becomes apparent that our wood pile is not going to last much more than a week – it goes down at an alarming rate when you need to keep the fire going all day.  We are dependent on the stove for heat so it matters.  The wood man is very busy with the temperature having plummeted suddenly, and it is the run up to Christmas,  and he has illness in the family.  But he obliges us with a trailer-full at the last minute and we generate our own warmth of an hour or two stacking it in the stable.  Neil barrowed, I stacked.

The weather stays icy cold but clear giving a day or two of brilliant air frosts.  Neil exercises his new telephoto lens to capture this frosted tree on our walk around the fields.

And I take this one with my phone…..across the field from the sheltered lane.

Racing on ….. our two pieces of festive tinsel are dutifully draped, presents from home are stacked around the “tree” we found in the woods and Neil checks out the seasonal viewing.

We are invited to have Christmas lunch with our lovely neighbours – Madame, at 96, the doyenne of the village, and her daughter.  A real privilege to be invited to share their four courses each with its own wine! They are a very private couple so – no pictures.

Given the size of Europe and the benign weather in its southernmost parts, why are we in the middle of a frozen Burgundy?  Easy – we have spent a week or so over Christmas here for the past few years but this year there is also work to be done that will keep us here until mid-January.  It is a big job – the barn needs a new roof.  Several spot repairs over the past few years have kept it going but our friendly local carpenter/handy man has finally said he can do no more – the slates are shot and the hooks that hold them up are rusted through. And it sags a bit. The roofer has promised to start on 3 January after promising, in May, that it would be done before Christmas.  Fingers are crossed.

 

Probably not:-(

Going on current performance my urge to blog is a pretty inconsistent animal.  Why is this? Partly, obviously, because I am busy doing the stuff I want to blog about and, secondly, because this happens in places where the internet is not necessarily very reliable.  The third disincentive is the time-consuming business of finding the photographs on whichever device they were snapped, downloading them one way or another onto my laptop, and processing them into the blog.  This is a multiple step process and I am sure there must be an easier way yet to be discovered!  And natural inertia probably plays its part too:-(

 

Just so you know I have not abandoned it, here is a summary of the three months since my last post:

• we returned to France for a month waiting on works to the fermette;

• spent the following month learning about motorhoming in Spain by trial and error, and discovering the realities of the weather down there;

• went back  to the fermette pending returning to the UK. And Neil took advantage of some (rare) February sunshine to give Portia an early spring clean.

So will I continue to blog?  Yes!  Why not?  Fuller, if slightly out-of-date, posts will follow.

 

At home with many jobs to do

The plan was to spend a few weeks in the UK to work with my sister to help my mother  settle  matters concerning her health and future living arrangements. This turned into a major, stressful and exhausting period for all concerned which was only finally settled in the second week of December. We packed up, sold or otherwise disposed of a lifetime’s-worth of furniture, personal and family things, and assorted clutter while a couple of urban foxes enjoyed the last days of summer sun in my mother’s back garden. I am very happy to say that (at the time of writing) most of the emotional, legal and financial matters are behind us.  My mother has moved into a new home near my sister and we can start to relax a little while we all get used to the new set up.

Between all the travels to and fro we also had a few van-related jobs to sort out.

Battery

Firstly there was the van battery which had a tendency to drain rather faster than it should when in storage – no reason could be found, it had been checked and was in good condition.  It is awkwardly located under the floor of the passenger side in the cab so we had been using the less than efficient charging points under the bonnet. Now Neil bought a smart charger which has a couple of leads to permanently attach to the battery terminals and extend into the cab itself.  This allows easy access for permanent trickle charging directly to the battery.  It worked – wonderful! Installing this had meant disconnecting the battery which led  unexpectedly to a solution to job number two…

The non-functioning CD player

The improvised tangle of wires we had lived with over the summer was due to the CD player not working.  Because it seemed to read the CD but no sound came out we had thought was a speaker wiring fault and an auto-electrician duly came to have a look.  Putting in a CD to demonstrate the problem it worked perfectly!  Slightly embarrassing but Neil and the electrician decided that disconnecting the battery had performed some kind of therapeutic ECT and the CD player has worked fine ever since.  No more interminable french romantic chansons on the radio!

Alarm vs habitation door

Thirdly was the matter of the alarm not locking the habitation door as part of its central locking function – which it used to do – plus the door itself refusing to lock with a key.  This meant having to lock it from the inside and get out the cab or use the secondary security lock we had installed earlier. The very knowledgeable and obliging Carl Mayer of Outsmart the Thief came to have a look and concluded it was not an alarm problem per se but that no power was getting to the locking mechanism in the door. The dealer we then took it to agreed.  He also opened our eyes to the shortcomings of typical extended warranties that are sold with vans: they would probably pay for the fix but not for the hours of work required to track the problem down.  They adjusted the door so it locked by key however and we decided that was enough for the time being.

This has not been a very interesting blog I’m afraid but has at least taken me on three months!  I could just have skipped over the period but I found I wanted the dates on the blog to follow on seamlessly – sorry:-(  Back on the road next time – rather later in the year than expected!

 

Enfin – a swim in the sea.

A leisurely forty minute drive from Le Portel and we arrive at our last French overnight stop in Wissant. This is another aire we have selected after seeing it on the OurTour blog as being  handy for Calais but far enough away not to have to worry.  And it has certainly been worrying this year.  Having said that, we have never seen any sign of the desperate people trying to  hitch a ride to the UK.  All we see is acres of flat land surrounded by miles of barbed wire fencing.

We get there so early that other vans are still leaving. But it turns out that vehicles come and go at all times of day here, depending on the time of their crossing.  We pick a nice shady corner so we can put out awning, chairs etc. without getting in anyone’s way.  Even some handy drying bushes! This is where it becomes apparent that not getting water at Le Portel was a mistake:-(  This aire has facilities for draining everything but no fresh water for filling up. It seems that you have to leave the aire and go to the municipal camp site a five minute drive away to fill up for a modest fee.  To keep your space you can put chairs and things across your space so as not to lose it.  We have seen this done elsewhere, notably Narlay, where the facilities are quite a long way away. The gauges on our two water tanks (fresh and grey) do not often tally despite the fact they both have a 100 litre capacity and the levels complement each other exactly. The fresh water tank can be showing 100% full one moment then drop to 70% after one small washing up and a cup of tea! At the same time the grey water tank will rise from 1% full to only 5% full for the same operations. Apparently this is true of most water level gauges and a bit of common sense is needed.  Some swift assessments and we decide we can manage the day and night without a refill if we forego showers in favour of … umm… a flannel… a swim?

We walk through the charming little village to the sea – yay!  The tide is in and at the north end of town is a lovely sandy beach backed by grassy dunes. The sun is hot, the water is cool and we have a lengthy wallow knowing it will be our last sea swim for a while.  We somehow manage to get lost wandering back but compensate with an ice-cream in the commercial sea-side strip in the centre.  Loads of restaurants if you fancy a final meal out.  We didn’t as we still had a fridge full of food to get through.  Not to mention the green tomatoes I had ruthlessly stripped from my three late-planted bushes in July.  Despite all the stone-shifting it had taken to make a bed to grow them in, I had not had so much as one ripe fruit.  So they accompanied us while they ripened (together with some of the beautiful pelargoniums I could not bear to abandon). I had had to leave the two basil plants that were thriving between the toms:-(

Before and after.

Wissant is definitely an aire to come back to.  We even discovered there was a path out the other side of the aire that took you to the beach even quicker. But for this trip we needed to get to bed, pack up and go. It was an easy ride to the Tunnel and a helpful border guard asked if we had checked everywhere as we queued to board.  I thought he meant gas off, cupboards fastened, fridge on 12v etc but realised later he meant had we checked for stowaways:-( The crossing was uneventful.  The train does look a little on the tight side as you roll up but is actually simpler than nosing into a car wash, both have rails at tyre level to keep you straight.

Arriving back in the UK at about 13:30 we had decided not to try and get home in one long drive.  Getting home late to unpack and clean up after a long drive would not be much fun, so we find a small Caravan Club site off the A1 to spend the night.  It is a PYO fruit farm and the camping is just a big field with a couple of fresh water taps and a couple of tanks for emptying the black stuff. We are surprised to be told that grey water is supposed to go in the bushes around the field.  We have no pipe to direct it deep into the bushes so end up just nestling as close a possible to the hedgerow to drain out.  You seem not to need such a pipe often but we must get one – we did try by taking a short length from the local builders merchant to check the fit but forgot to go back to buy some.

The farm shop and café are very pleasant in a rural fashion but the price of a cup of tea and a cake was a bit of a shocker – about the same as central York.  And, judging from the imprecations echoing across the rows of plum trees, they clearly think they have a problem with customers eating more fruit than they put in their punnets! Sours the atmosphere a bit – children are never going to manage to resist a juicy plum while they pick, even the well behaved ones – which these were. And judging from the price per pound, a little shrinkage had been well factored in already.

The sun stays out on a calm, clear and chilly evening and rises cheerfully again in the morning for our final departure of this trip. We have some difficult family business ahead of us for the next few weeks but hope to be back on the road to take advantage of autumn and winter somewhere in the south of Europe.  And I will try and remember to take more photos next time!

Travelling strategically
We had roughly planned a meandering trip back north taking a week or more to reach the Tunnel for a crossing on 1 September but the continuing heat made us revise our plans.  Portia has air-con in the cab which is great for driving, but the prospect of spending the rest of the time in a hot tin can in a sun blasted car park did not appeal.  Thirty six degrees falling to only 22 at night was still being forecast until Sunday 28th.  So we put our departure-from-the-fermette date back accordingly. We still wanted to take a route that avoided toll roads and needed a maximum of three or four hours driving a day, so the journey would still involve a few overnight stops.  Ideally there would be a swim or two en route and, crucially, we wanted to get to our final stop, just outside Calais, early enough to be sure of getting a place.  It is bank holiday week and still in school holiday time so likely to be BUSY at the coast.

The weather forecast was accurate and the plan worked –  we started packing up the evening before then a little cloud let us finish our preparations the next morning in tolerable temperatures. Phew!   Even though the barn was not quite big enough for Portia it was fine for Trudi so vehicles were shuffled around and both house and van sorted out – quite a job after three months.

All closed up:-( but still blooming

First stop was three hours drive across Centre to the north-west in the free aire in Chateaudun.  Here the parking is at the foot of the cliff where the eponymous chateau perches. Amazing! Down at parking level is a complex of canals on the river Loir and a watermill together with a peaceful park. Climbing a mere 100 steep stone steps up to the town there is the main square with all the cafés you could die of thirst before reaching. The aire was recommended by Ju and Jay in their blog. See  http://ourtour.co.uk/home/chateaudun-loir-not-loire/ for lots more and better pictures!

After a beer in the square and just as we passed a fragrant kebab shop we realised it must be about time to eat! We had had an early start and a long day so we forked out for donners and chips all round even though the fridge was groaning with all the food transferred from the fermette!  Also felt slightly guilty at staying in this historic place and only taking a passing look at the monuments and buildings all around.  It’s easily done when your travelling is destination focussed. One day we will come back with a plan and absorb it all more thoroughly.  I hope.

Next stop was another three hour drive north and back on the route we had taken south three months ago. We were heading for the coast at Boulogne (and a swim) but needed another night to get there.  Montville was in the right place but, as we got closer and I squinted more closely at the map, the wrong side of the tracks.  All the roads leading to it from our side of the railway line were marked with low bridges.  We are 3.09m (including 45cm satellite dome) and the bridges are all between 2.60 and 2.80.  What to do?  There did not seem to be a way around without doubling back nearly all the way to Rouen.  We followed the road that had the highest low bridge just to have a look.  It was certainly a narrow bridge – no scope for on-coming vehicles – but looked a lot higher than its claimed 2.80m.  We crept under with room to spare (fingers crossed, breath held and ears alert for crunching noises). The bridge is a very narrow high arch and I think the 2.80 must be its height at the point where it starts to narrow as the arch curves in.  We got through easily with our pointy, central dome but the corners on a high, square vehicle would not make it.

The Montville aire is well placed – adjacent to a leisure lake (no swimming – boo) with a health circuit around it and only five minutes from at least three bakers in the other direction!

Here I am taking advantage of the parcours de santé. Neil clicked just to soon to catch the amazing double back-flip I was warming up for.

I would put more pictures up except I didn’t take any and Neil’s all seem to have got lost somewhere between his camera and one of the computers he downloads them onto. They are probably on the desktop in York and we are currently back in France. Same goes for the next place so I will try and borrow some online ones for the time being.

Moving on…. Le Portel is close to Boulogne, which is close to the aire which is close to Calais and the Tunnel.  We seem to be proceeding in ever diminishing steps as we get nearer. The aire at Le Portel is a neat and tidy affair on the cliffs overlooking the now defunct Hoverport. Apparently hovercraft are very heavy on fuel and fell from favour as more efficient and higher speed ferries developed.  Noisy as well as I recall.

You can see the aire on the cliffs/dunes above the hoverport in this photograph (found on the internet). It is guarded by a barrier that demands your bank card for entry and requires an advance decision on water, electricity etc.  We were full of water from Montville  so didn’t select it and this turned out to be a mistake. You could not go back and buy it later without going out and coming back in again and it was not clear if that meant paying all over again:-(

Our spot was good though, alongside a grassy patch perfect for spreading out the chairs and table in our own shade.  That is one of the things you learn when the weather gets hot and trees are scarce – park with your habitation door facing eastish if you can.  Then, as the day heats up you can relax conveniently in the more substantial shade offered by the van instead of the flimsier shade provided by the awning. A sandy scramble down the dunes could have meant a swim but the water was waaaay out over half a mile of hot, flat sand and we decided against it.

Two more overnight stops before getting home and this has grown a bit too long so I’ll stop here for now and write a third Autumn catch up blog. Before I start the December catch-up blog:-) 

A couple of short blogs follow intended as a catch-up to glide seamlessly through the last two weeks of August and get us back across the Channel on 2 September – the last day of validity of our travel insurance.  Having shamefully neglected this time-consuming blog I had, amazingly, had the foresight to write some notes before I forgot everything! If all else fails there is always the metadata on the photos to help get the timeline straight!

16-28 August – canicule cowering

Get the shutters closed…..
We enter an extended period of scorching hot dog days – la canicule – it sounds so much more fearsome in french.  Either way, it is upon us and it can be dangerous to the susceptible.  Our fermette faces west and is blissfully cool all morning gradually going up by degrees until about 2pm when the sun gets its head around the side of the barn and gets nasty.  Shutters are closed, curtains drawn, fans turned on – a perfect time to sit  in a soft chair with something relaxing on the hifi and read a book. Maybe with closed eyelids.

Coming to at about 18:00, maybe feeling a bit sticky, it is cool enough to venture out for a swim. This moves to 18:30 and even 19:00 as the canicule persists. Being an old stone cottage with walls half a metre thick we manage quite well for several days.  Little by little the heat soaks into the stone and the relative cool lessens.  Nighttime offers little relief but the evening light and the sunsets are wonderful from the terrace.

A new diversion presented itself – the wine man came.  He was a charming young man from a vigneron in the Loire valley with a cool-bag of wines for sampling in the boot of his car.  He was offering an at-home dégustation and set up in the shade on the terrace (it was the morning) where we sipped, but did not spit, the red, white and rosé.  The prices were OK so we ordered a mixed case of white and rosé and he delivered the following week.  A nice way to buy some gifts to take home even though it involved lengthy order forms in triplicate!

The main chore of the period however was to sort out Trudi’s strange behaviour. Time to learn a  whole new technical vocabulary:-(  I have mostly forgotten the house renovation vocabulary of a few years back, so there should be brain space for car parts and faults.  Trudi had developed a tendency to twerk her rear end about a bit when on rough roads or at about 60mph.  It did not seem to affect the steering but was slightly unsettling when facing an oncoming hay wagon on a tight bend on a narrow road.  Suspension?  On a test drive the, rather surly, local mechanic thought so but Neil thought he had had all those parts thoroughly gone over and replaced in April in the UK so it seemed unlikely. She also had a slight metallic rattle which stopped on braking.  Nothing for it but to bite the bullet, get to an Audi dealer, apply for a small mortgage, and get the work done.

Much hanging about on an industrial estate in Nevers in 30+ degrees was required to get the definitive diagnosis – the shockers were shot. Parts would need ordering but, being August, would not arrive in time for the work to be done before we left.  She was still safe enough for local trips if driven sedately and not on motorways.  A quick call to the mechanic in York who had replaced the shockers in April revealed they had not actually been replaced.  Now we need to check the invoice and see if they were actually paid for!  A local and very friendly kwik-fit type garage will do the work next time we are back in, hopefully, a few weeks time.  Trudi is eighteen years old so will enjoy resting quietly with the bats in the barn in the meantime.

 

Communal éstivities and local lakes

Having failed to buy any Comté from an authentic supplier we found good range in a local supermarket – still in Franch Comté.  We bought a couple of chunks: one for us and one for some English friends who has asked us for apéro when strictly speaking it was our turn. The six month old comté was lovely – and went well with the magnificent spread Karen and Peter had laid on for us. A cross between a French apéro and an English high tea but with mediterranean delicacies.

The apéro is a great little institution over here.  Happening at six or six-thirty you should prepare to leave after an hour, maybe two,  and after a glass or two.  The first time we went to one particular French neighbour he thought, correctly, we may need educating in how it worked and helpfully said “Let me offer you a second drink before you go”. So now we know.  Having said that, the first time another set of French neighbours came around to us it lasted several hours and got very lively.  But – always good to have a rule of thumb!

Karen told us of another, public, vernissage the next day.  Having missed the last one I was keen to go.  This one was a preview for an exhibition of many local artists – painting, sculpture, working in wood, jewellery, appliqué. It is amazing how many good artists there are lurking in the french countryside. Equally amazing is how many bad to indifferent ones are willing to exhibit in public! Then two brocantes in quick succession resulting in a cow bell for nostalgia, and a musical phonograph for Nipper back home.

Having discovered that the President of the local Red Cross lives around the corner we have now found a handy way to recycle earlier brocante purchases:-(

We needed another trip in Portia. On their perch at the back of the van our bikes had started to get restive. The Canal de Nivernais runs right through our area.  Put these three things together and an obvious outing suggests itself.  The canal is carefully maintained for boats and the tow paths for walkers and cyclists.   We had already walked several sections of the canal nearest to us and had planned to follow it all the way from Auxerre to Decize on bikes.  The canal links the Seine in the north and Loire in the south and performs this neat trick by having extensive man-made lakes on the watershed, the Etangs de Baye et Vaux, which feed water into the canals downhill in both directions.

There are basins and ports along the way with services and parking.  The nearest one to us is at Chatillon-en-Bazois where a chateau overlooks water gardens beside the port, and where boats and motorhomes can pass a quiet night or two.  One end of the port has neatly laid out moorings for paying boat renters and the other has a makeshift free tap and electric point for everyone else. This is a really lovely spot with a floating crêperie and friendly boaters stopping to chat – some English from the Isle of Wight and some Ozzies spending six months cruising the canals. Disappointingly, no pink gins were forthcoming .

There is a proper motorhome aire in the centre of Chatillon as well but it is in a sun blasted car park with no trees.  We use its services in passing quite a lot, as it it closest to home for an empty-out on the way back, and it is handy for the shops. But for an overnight – the canal port is just perfect.

Finally, moment of truth, the bicyclettes get a trip out!  It is a tow path yet, under my wheels, it managed to be uphill in both directions! Hmm.  Neil whipped along it OK. I laboured along and had to get off and walk at the tiny slopes  up the sides of locks or bridges.  Feeble:-( We managed nine kilometres though, so not that bad for a first real effort on a hot day!

At least I remembered a flask of tea for a shady spot.

Back at the van a Dutch couple had parked up near us with the ubiquitous two bikes on the back.  Theirs were electric!  And they let us have a go!!  Brilliant!!!  They don’t do all the work for you, just enough to avoid a heart attack.  When you come to a slope they silently cut in and you can pedal up it with no extra effort.  I want one. Neil probably wants one.  The £1,000 price tag is a bit steep however so the hunt for a second-hand ones is on.  And you can charge them up on a solar panel in the van.  No brainer!

The main problem with canals is that you cannot swim in them.  So after a beautiful, peaceful night we picked a route home that went past a lake or two.  We are only half an hour from home here by the direct route, but going north first you get to the Morvan National Park.  This is a kind of Lake District without the millions of visitors – not well known at all really.  Hurrah!  Two lakes with aires were available so we headed for the first, keeping the second in reserve in case there was a space problem. There wasn’t and we got the last-but-one spot beside the Lac de Pannecière. There was some question about whether we were parked  in the bus stop bay or a moho spot  but since everyone else was already in it we felt OK.

Besides, being a bank holiday weekend, in the middle of holiday season, in the middle of nowhere, we felt the chances of a bus coming along were slight.

We sat in the shade of the trees and cooled down with a swim.  It was not overcrowded.

It is a huge lake with a huge scary dam  at one end: two hamlets were submerged in the making of the lake in the 1930s.  Their remains can still be seen during the deccenial emptying of the lake (…and the sunken church bells toll eerily on the night air when the moon is full…..).Apparently during the now infamous rains of earlier this year it was a fine balance to hold back the enormous quantity of water in the lake and threaten the integrity of the dam, or  release it and risk flooding the villages, and ultimately Paris, downstream.

Home again and a quick mention of an impromptu musical evening in small terrain just up the road. Alain, a local resident, organises musical events and Tribal Veda, his band of the year, had just finished their tour so came for a small goodbye performance at his place.  There was a bring-a-dish buffet and a big campfire – for effect rather than heat.  About one hundred people materialised from the deserted countryside; the horse and donkey in the adjacent field came for a look over the fence; strains of Balkan-meets-north-african melodies streamed out on the night air.  A real unexpected highlight.

 

Probably, so let’s go east again!  

During the couple of days we took to regain confidence after the gas débacle and sort ourselves out again, the weather got hotter.  Too hot to go back to the the flats of Centre we thought, so we would head for the hills of Jura again,  to the rivers and waterfalls we had left unswum  a few weeks ago.  It gets cooler with altitude doesn’t it?  So back east it is.  That far east no-one else is going to be there are they? It’s always the assumptions that catch you out n’est ce pas?

My faith in France Passion was undiminshed after our muddy experience in June – after all, even the roads and bridges had been underwater back then. There is a vineyard beyond Autun described as the seigneurial farm of the adjacent chateau. Romantic?  Nostalgic? Oh yes – all of those.  The parking was a small green paddock with trees outside the ancient farm walls and buildings with a view of the chateau through the trees.

We are a bit timid about tasting wine and maybe not liking it, but feeling obliged nonetheless, but we studied the list with a view to a sampling and a purchase.  On arrival we had rung the bell, been greeted by several noisy but seemingly friendly dogs and cheerfully waved into the field by the vigneron who had then disappeared. When we went to buy a bottle or two next morning, the french people, in the other van that had turned up, told us the family had gone out.  We had missed our moment due to being greeted by the vigneron rather than his wife.   She apparently had answered their ring and been more inclined to converse and sell, than the man himself.  Ah well, a free night in such surroundings is pretty perfect in any case.

Not sure if I have yet mentioned the Wild Swimming ebook we bought to discover rivers and lakes for a dip and maybe an overnight stop.  One lake listed was Lac de Narlay,  way over on the east of the Jura, with an adjacent campsite.  Turquoise waters were mentioned together with descriptions of the several other lakes in the region.  The area is famous for its lakes it seems, and rivers and mountains.  It turns out it is a popular holiday spot too – but only for those seeking a less formal camping set up.  The Municipal Camping de Narlay is certainly that – a couple of huge fields sloping down to the turquoise waters – and it is a free-for-all in terms of pitches.  Hopelessly short on accessible electricity points we pitched up without it half way up the slope on a flattish bit perfectly placed for a bit of tree shade and a bit of satellite signal – and a view.

What a lake, what a view.

It is a fabulous lake and it really is turquoise with rocks for jumping off.

The freedom to pitch where you want led to some jostling among the tents.  Taking the car out for the day you were likely to come back and find a tent pitched on your parking spot and someone else established within snoring distance.  The large new group that turned up the day after us pitched with  guy ropes overlapping the eating space of the French family opposite who had gone out for a couple of hours.  Complaints were muttered! Next day, when the Swiss couple beside us left, the new group seized the opportunity to move onto that one as well and came and asked when we were leaving. They had a large party coming and wanted more space.  They asked politely, no pressure, as the next few carloads of friends and family arrived.  We stayed in our spot.

There is a real feeling of slightly hippyish freedom here. Everyone seemed to have bought anti-gravity games and toys – tight ropes for walking, diabolos, juggling balls, frisbees.  Big, baggy, low crotch harem pants for the men, scarves and kaftans for the women.  We contributed to the eastern vibe with with our ancient indian elephant sheet for protection from afternoon sun.

And we ate exclusively from the outdoor grill – which is the only way to cook in the heat!

This is definitely a campsite of two halves.  At the top there are some nice new sanitaires and on these terraced upper slopes the more delicate campers were pitched, with electricity, close to the café and facilities.  The lower slopes were wilder – the further you got from the reception at the top, the less any rules applied: there were many “No fires” signs yet every evening the lower slopes were dotted with little camp fire blazes.  Families appeared from the woods laden with fallen branches, and kettles were boiled while guitars were strummed around the flames in the dark.

Lovely swimming, woods and fields to walk around the lake with cows clanking like extras in a Swiss film, bread available down a shady path (if you were early enough), plenty of people-watching and chatting made for a relaxed stay.  Some rain for cool as well!  Our four day stay was not enough but it is definitely one to come back to in late August or September when it will be quieter.

Heading home again we take a little detour to have a look at the Cascades du Herisson, hoping maybe for a little dip in a pool below a fall – also mentioned in Wild Swimming.  It seems some of the swims they list are not that wild, or maybe just not that isolated!

Not exactly The Smoke That Thunders.  Very pretty though and with a shallow plunge pool below guarded by an alert lynx.  For some reason.

We did not plunge as we were scared of the lynx and the pool looked a bit slimy.  This cascade is the first of a series and there are other, better pools below the succeeding falls. Which get a bit more impressive in terms of water volume apparently.  It was too hot to follow the trail so this is also earmarked for another visit.

We drove to the nearby, signposted La Fromagerie in the hope of getting some cheese.  Seemed reasonable to me.  Comté is the famous local variety and we had an apero pending.  We had to drive on cheeseless however as there was none to be found amongst all the herisson-related gifties. La Fromagerie is just the name of the hamlet that houses the giftie shoppies and restaurant these days. They seem to be missing a trick there:-(

Racing on in the hope of getting to the end of this blog….  We spent one more night in a nice little aire in the historic little town of Givry: famed for its wine and architecture. We had a walk around but it was hot!  The aire had trees and picnic tables and backed onto the voie verte. Our bikes, whose wheels had only briefly touched the woodland path at Narlay before the rain, looked longingly at the smooth dedicated cycle path.  Cyclists and roller skaters whizzed past as we watched, glass in hand, from the shade:-) It was still very hot after all.

 

 

….in more ways than one…

So this a shortish blog.

We came here from the north, went south and then east – so clearly it was time to go west.   To the west of us, from memory, is the flattish plain of Centre which undulates its way into the flat valley bottoms of the Loire and Cher rivers.  There is a fondly remembered campsite on a lake at Chateau la Valliere just beyond the Loire itself.  It was one of the first few campsites we stayed at in 1990 when we had arrived limp and bedraggled in a car with no aircon and at least 30 degrees outside.  The lake was a bit tepid at the end of August that time but a lifesaver nonetheless. It’s a Municipal campsite so should be relatively cheap.

We went through the usual bad tempered (maybe slightly better this time?) packing of van and shutting up of house and headed for Bourges where there is a lovely shady double avenue of trees that form the Aire de Service for mohos. It is only a couple of minutes walk to the city centre and is free to park, a couple of euros if you want water or electricity.  We needed neither of those – we thought – as we smoothly connected to Radio Four, turned on the gas bottle and filled the kettle for a nice cup of tea in the shade.  But – no gas came through the cooker.  Then, no gas came through to the fridge.  Or the water heater. Hmm… lots of knob twiddling, button pushing and head scratching.  But still no gas.  Something had gone wrong.  Without gas or electricity we could not cook and the fridge, running only on 12v just keeps things at the temperature they were already at but cannot handle actually chilling them further.

What to do?  We knew there was a moho shop on the outskirts of Bourges as Neil had found it some time ago just in case.  With a bit of strangled internet band width we located it precisely and discovered it was shut on Sunday (they’d go out of business in the UK!) and Monday mornings!  In prime holiday season!  Bankruptcy is too good for them! Anyway – it was hot and we had plenty of salad stuff on board so we decided to enjoy Bourges until Monday lunchtime then take it in.  The main drawback was – NO TEA!

The details are too painful and boring to relate but eventually a puzzled mechanic got it going on Propane and with yet another style of pigtail. He could not sell us the Propane though as they had run out and he was using the works bottle.  No problem, 100 euros lighter, we  carried on and would pick up a bottle at a garage en route. A good plan but when we tried to fulfil it we found we could not fit a second 13.5kg gas bottle in the locker.  It is designed for one big one and one small one and the big useless Butane was already in there:-(

Naturally  it had been the hottest day of the year that we had spent standing in garage forecourts and heaving gas bottles around (Neil that is), so in desperate need of a swim we aimed for the banks of the Cher.  There is a lovely river beach in Chabris with another double avenue of trees forming a Municipal campsite just over the road.  The cheapest we had experienced in a long time and with veeeeery basic facilities. But quiet, shady, handy for a swim.  So, no real complaints.  We had to park adjacent to the only other campers in the whole place in order to get on hook up to be able to boil a kettle for some tea 🙂 and freeze the fridge down.  We also had to park with our rear end hanging out a bit on the campsite lane in order to get both shade and satellite (thanks new compass).  But – neither car that passed in the next few hours had a problem.

Clearly – this trip was doomed and we needed to get home to sort out the gas bottles.  So we turned about.  This is the point when Neil engaged on lengthy on-line debate with other moho owners.  If it works on Propane it should work on Butane –  much debate about pressures and temperatures, bulkhead regulators and rupture hoses was to no avail.  Butane did not work.  Newly acquired Propane did. They concluded the Butane gas bottle was “MT” (and, by implication, we should hang our heads in shame).  By its weight we were sure it was full but to eliminate the possibility we tested it on our cooker at home – it is full and it works fine. We can hold our heads up again!  But still no Butane on the van. The solution can wait until we can speak the same language as the technician.

I will take this opportunity to show you our sophisticated solution to the absence of a functioning van CD player.  It goes like this:  connect iPad into Auxilliary socket on van radio.  Find gadgets to allow many connections to power different devices via different ports.  Play previously downloaded music.  A teenager would have known that.  Well – it was a helpful young man not much older than that who explained it to us slowly and carefully  and sold us the necessary piece of cable.  The other wires are for dashcam and satnav and, as a bonus,  you can see how straight the roads are in Centre!

 

 

 

 

Domestic tasks, local animations

Fuel is one of the things that need attention in a motorhome.  Solar for 12v electricity, gas for regular power and proper 240v electricity when hook up is available.  Each offer different funtionality but you really need either gas or 240v electricity for convenient living.  We had discovered that the electric part of our water heater no longer worked so gas was even more important.  We had ferreted through the barn and found our old camping stove.  It has a griddle plate!  It fitted the barbeque connection point outside the van!  Hurrah – no more cooking inside in 30 degree temperatures. Just needed to be sure we did not run out of gas….

There are standard English gas bottles and standard French gas bottles and they are not the same standard (nor are they in any other european country apparently). One has a right hand thread on the connector and the other, a left hand thread.  That is the beauty of standards, there are so many to choose from.  🙂 So connection tubes (pigtails) of various kinds are required – and vary according to where your regulator is installed – on the bottle or on the van.   Then there is a choice of Propane or Butane and discussing the merits of each on a motorhome forum is to enter into an area of partially understood science and beliefs of a religious fervour undreamt of in contemporary theological debate.

Our English propane bottle (red) may have been running low – the cunning magnetic thermometer device we had bought to indicate the level was incomprehensible. To avoid running out while away we decided to replace it with our spare French butane bottle (blue) from the fermette. We needed the correct pigtail and true to our pattern of not doing something once if you could easily do it twice, we went to Corbigny and bought the wrong one, then went back the next day and got the right one. To be fair to us, trial and error is really the only way to go with this – not great when talking about gas:-(  The Butane worked on the camping stove, fridge, cooker and heater.  Hurrah! Now we were fully fuelled up and ready to griddle the chipos al fresco next time out.

Before that we had the Fête de la Bêêêle et Laine to experience.  (Bleater and Wool – it’s a  pun in French apparently.) The star of the show was a flock of sheep that was being driven from another town the day before, spending the night at our local lake, then onto St Saulge in the morning.  Too good to miss, we headed for the lake at the appointed time with a modest crowd and waited.  And waited.  Children grew fractious. We waited.  Some walkers appeared who had been part of the transhumance, got into mini-buses and disappeared.  Still no sheep:-(  Annie, of the brocante last week, was there and discovered that the sheep had stopped in a field some way before the lake and were now quietly grazing after their five kilometre trot along the byways.  We peered over the fence at them but it was not quite the same.

The crowd passed the time in true French style and the sheep quietly grazed.

The next day the fête took to the streets of St Saulge. It was an orgy of sheepy delights.

Six different breeds were in town for the show – here are five of them.

The whole town had been decked out in sheep-related stuff: stalls dedicated to weaving, knitting, crocheting; literature and story-telling about sheep and shepherds; shearing and sheep dog trials; high fashion felt garments and low fashion stuffed critters; no article of street furniture was left un-yarnbombed – including the tourist tuff-tuff. (Which I am not sure has ever carried a tourist.)  

Neil felt quite at home in this woolly company.

It was a hot, hot day.  I caused some alarm when my drinking flask exploded.  Usually it contains tea but I had experimented on this hot day  with Perrier menthe.  Walking about shook it up and the lid exploded off.  Only a modest explosion but not a good thing in a crowded French square at the moment.

After the story-telling, overloaded with so much sheepy and woolly activity we got back in the car, hit the air-con and headed to Annie’s place nearby.  From low art to high art.  She had said it was open house to view the gallery of her partner Guidi.  And so it was.  Not a soul was about but the house was open and the barn was open with pictures and sculptures displayed.  What a place for a gallery…

We studied the art on the walls and flicked through those on the stands – quite nice some of them – but no-one came. A very literal interpretation of an open house.

Back to the lake for a dip.

Skipping lightly over the days in my vain attempt to catch up, we went home and footled about until the local highlight of the summer the following weekend.  This was the repas champêtre , promising spit roasted pork (jambon á la broche) and dancing.  The road was closed outside the Marie, trestle tables set up and this great rural summer time tradition unrolled. After eleven years we are now recognised as part of the community and it is nice to be greeted by people we still hardly know but nod at regularly.  Especially Neil, for whom nodding and smiling is the main form of communication with French speakers.  With a smattering of words and phrases, and huge good will, he can get quite a long way.  Taking random seats we are lucky to end up sitting with a group of Dutch visitors who speak perfect English so conversation could flow unimpeded.

It’s all very convivial and the wine flows as well.

Dinner is served al fresco.  The chicken wire is due to another piece of local politics.  These events used to happen in the road and on the piece of land opposite, only half of which is owned by the commune.  Then the owner of the other half took his bat home and put a chicken wire fence around his part and, for a year or two events were squeezed up a bit. Not sure what happened (well, there was an election and a change of Mayor) but now the gates are opened and we have spread back onto that half again.

Dinner is served: melon to start, jambon with frites to follow, a piece of cheese (of course) and a raspberry frozen meringue thing.  Not bad for 14 euros including music. A great night out – we heard the stopouts staggering home at about 2 am.