Blue shutters and thunderstorms

21st April 2009

We have stopped tonight in a town called Digoin, which is on the upper reaches of the river Loire. We have a view of the river from the van and it is rather lovely. The weather has been fantastic today, and we have spent this afternoon ambling around town, followed by a cold drink in a café on the town square. This is the life!

Yesterday we put the van through its paces in the mountains for the first time climbing to around 1000m and as if as a reward for last week it did superbly. We skirted the edge of the Auvergne and had some great views of the old volcanoes around the Puy de Dome. We arrived in the pretty Auvergne town of Aigueperse in torrential rain, and were soon being deafened by the thunder. Being truly British, after the worst had passed through, we donned our waterproofs, got out the umbrellas and went off to explore….we were still drying our shoes today!

Over the weekend we finally made it out of Limoges and up to the lake we were aiming for last week. It was good to be back and I was pleased to find it had lost none of its charm from those family holidays years ago. We did some walking and cycling through the forests and around the reservoirs and had a much needed wind down from last week. On Sunday I left Chris fixing his bike and decided to cycle up to the lake and then as it was so lovely (see picture) cycled all the way round. I had a super day but very tired legs after the 40km round trip and lots of hills. I will certainly be quite fit by the end of this year!

So over the next week or so it is on to the black forest and southern Germany (fingers crossed as none of my projected destinations on here seem to be accurate). Although France has been great I am quite excited to leave and move on to new places.

When I started this entry I intended to wrote a bit about my impressions of France and in particular my love of the blue shutters that are everywhere, and a simlar colour to the allotment shed. When I tried to explain it sounded a bit lame but I just liked the title anyway so have left it! Maybe it would make a good book title ???

N45 50''28' E1 10''52'

Some days every thing seems to be going so well, however the fates don’t like you realising this and have a habit of conspiring against you!

 

This morning Chris had his first drive of the van. There were a few hairy moments for both of us to start with but he did really well and by lunch time we had got a good 100km under our belts. We therefore decided that we would skip the random town we had chosen to head for and make a long day of it with me taking over the driving and head on to our next planned stop, a beautiful lake up on the edge of the massif central that I had visited years ago (for Mum and Dads benefit we were going to Vassiviere and I was really looking forward to it).

 

So …. we were zooming along well on the dual carriageway into Limoges and looking forward to dinner by the lake when all of a sudden I felt the van start wobbling. I knew it wasn’t the wind, so started to slow and look for a place to pull off, when within seconds there was a horrible noise and the van took on a definite lean to the right. I slammed on everything (well gently stopped her) and luckily there was a bit of tarmac on the side of the road to pull into. We donned our high viz’s and got out to have a look.....and discovered a properly ruined tyre.

 

As we were on the side of a busy dual carriage way there was no way we were going to change it ourselves and so off I went to find the break down cover details, while chris put up the warning triangles. We spent a surprisingly jolly few hours sat on the side of the road, receiving sympathetic hoots from passing traffic, and were soon on our way again thanks to a helpful French mechanic who turned up and with smiles, nods, and a bit of gesturing got us on our way. The only slight hitch came when trying to explain our location as we were in the middle of no where, “somewhere on the D941…..near the D20 ….direction Limoges” but thanks to modern technology we also had our GPS co-ordinates.

 

As we no longer had a useful spare and the roads here seem to much more covered in sharp pointy things than back home we decided that we should stop at the next town for a few days and get things sorted. Sooo…out came the campsite book and to our relief discovered that there was a campsite in Limoges, only 8km down the road. This has turned out to be a lovely little site, and a haven after two hours of sitting on the side of a busy dual carriageway. Judging by the tourist info we were given Limoges looks like a nice place too, hopefully we will get a chance to find out after we get some new tyres tomorrow.

 

Garages again

Sorry folks, I am going to have to break a promise I made only a few blog entries ago, there is going to be talk of garages ……. This entry is partly self therapy to get today out of my mind so feel free to ignore if you want!!

 

As the tyre that had blown was one of the rear tyres (and a fancy mud and snow type) we decided the best thing to do was to get two new tyres for the back and keep the old mud and snow as a spare. I spent the evening mugging up on useful vocabulary (they don’t teach you words for axle and jacking points at school) and as I went to sleep last night my head was pounding with all sorts of French words and sentences that I was going to need to explain at the garage today. I kept waking up with the words “pneu” and “roue de secour” going round in my head!!

 

Anyway today my French has got us through, it seems quite well. We got quotes from two garages this morning, who were about the same price, however one seemed much more helpful so we booked in the work with them for this afternoon. At this point I had explained that we needed new tyres, got prices, roughly explained what happened yesterday, asked them to put the spare back under the van and check a hole in the front tyre where we had removed a screw a few days earlier! We came back to the site for lunch and I relaxed thinking that the difficult part was over.

 

Again – more fool me! We arrived back at the garage after lunch, after a brief discussion re the type of tyres all was sorted, I reversed the van into their workshop, and went to sit down and read a book. We could see them busy working and all seemed to be going well until Jean Claude came into the waiting room and asked me to follow him. I was led over to look at the rim and could see that it was horribly cracked; I guess stopping the van on it yesterday didn’t do it much good! This obviously left us with a problem so I summoned up my remaining French and asked if he had a new one in the shop. Unfortunately he didn’t so we agreed they would put the new tyre on the spare rim and we would try and get a new hub elsewhere.

 

I returned to the waiting room, clutching my dictionary (it hasn’t left my hands today!) and then asked if they could recommend somewhere we could buy a new hub and they gave us an address and phone number of the nearest mercedes dealership. I had a bit of a panic about speaking on the phone and eventually got the helpful receptionist to ring ahead for us. A hub was reserved and we headed off with the help of the good old sat nav to our second garage of the day.

 

By this point, needless to say I was beginning to feel quite drained. Those of you who have read about our pains in Swindon at the Mercedes dealership will sympathise with me when I say that as we drove into the second garage it looked and felt exactly the same. With a sinking feeling we went into reception, discovered through more French that this garage has the Mercedes dealership characteristic of not wanting to give a fixed price, finally got it all agreed and at 6pm this evening were safely back on our campsite with two new tyres, one new hub and a very tired me!

 

 

 

Bienvenue a France

So here's the update "from somewhere in France"; which turns out to be Le Puy-Notre-Dame, a small, sleepy and somewhat crumbly vineyard town just south of Saumur in the Anjou region.

Those of you who have spent any time in France will know what I mean by crumbly! For everyone else it's a beautiful old place but the general dilapidation of the buildings would give English Heritage a fit. I will remember this town as the place with the gates. Each house has the most majestic set of gates, with carved stone surrounds, behind some are mini chateaux (the wine estates) and behind others small tumbledown cottages and old troglodyte caves. They seem to have secured grants from the regional government for renovations, but just to the gates and there are lots of shiny new gate surrounds in old walls.

As it is a while since I last updated this (and its raining) I have a feeling this is going to be a long post, apologies in advance….As usual for anyone who is interested our route since we got to France has taken us first across from LeHarve to Le Mont St Michel, on to St Malo and Dinan, and then inland to Josselin. From Josselin we drove to Carnac, had a quick look at the menhirs (prehistoric stones which I find it very difficult to get excited about!), felt the need to flee as it was just too touristy, continued on to La Roche Bernard and Guerande and then finally out of Brittany to the vineyards around Saumur.

We stayed two nights at Le Mont St Michel and on the second evening walked out across the causeway from our site. It was fantastic seeing the Mont all lit up and was soo much quieter than during the day. We forgot to take our torches and had to walk back across the causeway by the light of the moon and it was a fantastic experience. During the day we had been for a long cycle across the surrounding countryside which seems to be more Dutch than French, miles of polders and lots of windmills.

My favourite town in Brittany has to be Josselin. It is an old medieval town full of half timbered buildings, however unlike in the UK they are painted lots of different colours, none of your black and white and it gives the town a really warm and jolly feel. It was great to revisit the area around Guerande where I spent so much time with Mum and Dad years ago, and nice to see that nothing has really changed in the last 15 years.

The weather has finally caught up with us after a fantastic month in England and first week here and this week has seen us plodding around with umbrellas and waterproofs for a couple of days. Last night our weather station, which I hasten to add we inherited with the van, was giving us a storm warning (it bleeps and flashes and may get thrown out of the window at some point) in complete opposition to the beautiful sunny 20 degrees outside. Today it has been proved right, as it seems to have been raining most of the day. I am yet to be convinced it's a storm as such, more just an English day!

As a result we ditched the idea of a cycle through the vines and contented ourselves with a morning stroll under umbrellas. We have spent the afternoon in the van catching up on running repairs and reading. We have yet more masticing to do in the shower as I was bit clumsy during the night, stepped too close to the edge of the tray and heard a really upsetting cracking. It seems the plastic is just old and fatigued, and may well be more mastic than plastic by the time we return!

I am really excited about all the countries we plan to visit this year but I have to admit that it is rather nice to be back in France. My French is doing dangerously well, in the sense that I have been getting along well and asking all the right things, but as they then assume I am better than I am I get a whole long diatribe back which is completely unintelligible! We have been indulging (possibly too much) on patisseries and croissants and (much to Chris's disgust) I have some very smelly camembert to!

Life on the road seems to be going well so far and France is really well set up for campervans. Campsites have special deals if you only stay overnight, most of the towns have service points where you can fill up with water and empty the waste and toilet and many have dedicated parking and camping areas attached.

We move on in the morning towards La Rochelle and the wine regions round Bordeaux before heading east across the Dordogne and Auvergne towards Switzerland. Well that is at least the plan, in the words of Lao Tzu (thanks Mel!!) "A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving"