Loire Valley – Sept 2015

We weren’t sure that we would actually be going on this holiday until a few days beforehand. Sue had a fall on the patio at home and thought that she had badly bruised her knee. Turns out that she had broken her femur in 2 places. They took the plaster off on the Tuesday before we were due to leave and gave her a splint. She was quite down about it but my encouraging shouts of ‘Run, Forest, run’ really cheered her up! (not). The consultant didn’t want to see her for 3 weeks so he ok’d going on holiday – which was a huge relief to us both.

I did a lot of the getting ready and packing on the Wed and Thurs nights before we set off. In spite of that and the afternoon off work, we still didn’t get going until 16:30 ish.

When we set off, Sue sat in the passenger seat but that was not comfortable so after we’d stopped for a break, she sat in one of the dining seats – which is a proper belted passenger seat. Otherwise, an uneventful drive down to near Cambridge.

We got to the site just before the office closed – though I’d already parked up in the late arrivals spot because I assumed we were too late. We were next to a load of trees so couldn’t get the dish to lock on to a satellite – again. Early night all round in anticipation of being in France the next day.

Had breakfast and set off reasonably early. Pressed on and got round M25 and on to M20. Stopped at services on M20 where we had stopped in March in much more stressful circumstances.

Ellie normally sleeps on the floor while we travel so it was a novelty for her for Sue to be sitting in the back. Consequently she decided to seek a bit of attention and she decided she would sit with Sue – a position she adopted for most of the rest of the trip.

Got to the Tunnel around 13:00 for 14:50 crossing. We weren’t offered an earlier crossing so parked up and had some lunch.

I went into the terminal to get some Euros and when I came back to the MoHo, guess who was in the driving seat – as you can see in the video.

They have a good area for walking and exercising dogs – including a fenced-in compound with see-saws and other play equipment – which she refused to have anything to do with.

We got to Calais around 16:30 local time and took the same roads as we’d taken in March – though it was only a short run to the site that we’d already booked for overnight. We got to site and, whoopee doo, the satellite dish locked on and sky box worked first time which was a relief.

There were loads of Brits on the site. It was quite busy and had various games areas including swimming pool – not really warm enough to give that a try.

Laura had been texting the highlights of the Town vs Aldershot home game that I was missing – we won 4-1.

We tried to watch Best Marigold Hotel on dvd but the Finlux player didn’t seem to like the disk and played up half way through so we abandoned that, watched some tv and had a reasonably early night.

I love the first morning in France so Ellie and I went for a walk outside the campsite just to soak up being in France. On the first morning, just seeing the road signs and the traffic on the wrong side of the road gives you a flavour of being in France.

We had nowhere booked for Sunday night – we wanted to get at least half-way to Saumur so we headed south.

I’ve said it before and will no doubt say it many times but driving in France on the D roads (equivalent to A roads) on a Sunday is a real pleasure. Not many lorries and not that many cars because the French presumably make it a rest day with the family.

Being a Sunday (ie limited opening hours), we soon came to an InterMarché where stocked up. We also filled up with diesel at a Carrefour self service station – after some fannying about per video. Again, being a Sunday, you can’t be too sure away from the motorways that you are going to see an open filling station.

After checking the Aires book, we settled on heading to the Aire at Broglie and weren’t disappointed when we got there – you can see the approach to the Aire in the video. The Aire is in what we think is an old railway line and is in a bit of a dip surrounded by woods and hills – so not perfect for tv reception on either the aerial or the satellite dish – so another night with no tv.

I went for a walk first thing to the square to get a token for the service point from the town hall. The person behind the counter didn’t have much change so I paid €5 for the pitch. I bet most people don’t actually pay – I think they come round to collect but we didn’t see anyone. I then went back to the MoHo to collect Ellie and we went for a walk – including going round the Jardin Aquatique du Moulin de Fresnay. Really well-kept gardens.

We serviced the MoHo and then set off for Saumur where we’d booked a pitch for 3 nights. But not before Ellie left her mark on the aire by digging a hole alongside the MoHo – it’s a terrier thing. I think I filled it in without anyone noticing.

We stopped for breakfast after half an hour or so in a layby overlooking the town of Gacé – after a risky reversing manoeuvre because I overshot the layby entrance. We carried on south and drove through Le Mans and then stopped for a late lunch at Pontvallain.

Ellie and I went for a walk through the town. Weather was nice as you can see on the video. Being lunchtime’ish, not a lot was happening and most of the shops were closed. I must have been starting to look French because a car pulled up and the driver asked me directions to somewhere. I had to tell him ‘Pardonne, je suis étranger (Sorry, I’m a foreigner)’

We pressed on and caught our first sight of the Loire when we arrived at the outskirts of Saumur and worked our way to the site – Camping L’Île d’Offard – which, as the name suggests, is on an island in the Loire.

We parked up in amongst trees so the satellite signal was poor but we got French channels through the aerial. Weather wasn’t brilliant. We settled in for the night in anticipation of a relaxing next day with no travelling to come.

Ellie and I went for an early morning walk outside of the boundary of the campsite (see video). We were not travelling today and it was our first chance to really relax so I attacked the backlog of Motor Cycle News that I had to work through.

We had booked what the site class as a ‘Privilege pitch’ – ie it is supposed to have good views. We could see the Loire and some buildings in Saumur but nothing great. I suppose it was better that being in the middle of the site looking out on to other MoHo’s but I would not describe it as privilege.

The weather was ok and we needed some supplies so I decided to walk to the nearby Leclerc – nearby meaning a mile and a half or so. Supplies usually means beer and carrying that for a mile and a half meant that it got really heavy. I could have lightened the load by drinking some of it but decided against.

The walk took me past the Cavalry school. A very impressive building. I didn’t actually see any horses but there looked to be some big stables – and there was plenty of horse shit about!

When I got back, the weather was still reasonably warm so I put the awning out for only the second time since we got the MoHo. It frightens Ellie – not sure why. Putting it out was obviously tempting fate because it then started to rain.

We needed to top up the water so, later on, during a rare break in the rain, we started to drive on to the next pitch so that I could attach the hose to the nearby tap. I found out that mains cables are not elastic. I found that out because I drove off without disconnecting the cable – which was a bit silly. A foreign bloke a few pitches down got very animated and started waving but I’d already realised what I’d done. Luckily, the cable just came out of the bollard and no damage was done – other than to my pride.

The rain did hold off long enough for Sue, Ellie and I to go for a walk round the site. There was another Bailey 745 on the site – didn’t get the opportunity to speak to the inhabitants. Then the rain returned so the rest of the day was spent in the MoHo – and the rain didn’t stop for almost 24 hours.

Not a lot I can say about today. It was raining most of the day. We went for a drive around the area – I would have put together some of the dash-cam video but a twig had lodged on to the top of the windscreen and that was right in the middle of the video – so I’ve binned that. Nice to have an enforced period of relaxation, though. Spent some time looking at where to go tomorrow and settled on the Orleans area so googled a few sites and ended up booking the Municipal site at Olivet

Wet and miserable start to the day – and the weather wasn’t great, either! We’d aimed to follow the Loire as closely as possible and were avoiding main roads as usual. Stopped for breakfast after 30 mins or so and then pressed on towards Tours.

We drove through Tours following the course of the Loire and went under the A10 – a road we’ve driven down a number of times. Just outside of Tours, we spotted a road sign to Vouvray. I hadn’t realised that they made that round here. I had a spell of drinking that at one point – not an unpleasant experience!

We stopped for lunch in another layby. Ellie and I went for a walk amongst all the litter. A young bloke pulled up in his Peugot 208 or whatever it was and stood at the roadside having a pittle in full view of everyone. I think I may have said Bonjour to him as he was doing it. I stopped short of shaking his hand.

During the journey, I finally worked out how to work the trip computer in the Peugot – not that I’d really tried very hard previously. So, from then on, we started logging mileage and miles per gallon etc – but we lost the bit of paper that we wrote them all down on so that was a really useful exercise.

We kept passing signs for Château this and Château that but couldn’t really spot what we would class as a castle. The Loire Valley is a world heritage site (whatever one of those is) because of the large number of Châteaux but I suspect that a lot of them are more like the equivalent of a large stately home. Given our issues with mobility and access, they are not of much interest to us, anyway.

A lot of the driving in the afternoon was on roads that lead away from the Loire and was uneventful. We arrived in Olivet and went straight to the site, parked up and settled down for the rest of the day. We were in trees but the satellite dish locked on and we were on hookup so Sue could get her fix of the Sky channels for the night.

Leisurely start to the day. The campsite is on the edge of Olivet so Ellie and I were straight into the countryside on our walk.

The campsite had a blackboard (sorry, non-pc word these days) with local events on it and it mentioned a local market. So Ellie and I went for a walk to the market in the afternoon. We set off in reasonable weather but shortly after we set off, it started to rain quite heavily so we got soaked.

I didn’t really know where we were heading but we eventually got to the town centre where the market was being held. On the way, we passed tramlines – I think the tram goes right into the centre of Orleans. A tram was passing at the time and Ellie was not a big fan – she seemed frightened of it.

The market was ok. I got some carrots with all the greenery attached – the woman said something to me in French which I didn’t catch so, instead of doing the sensible thing and asking her to repeat it, I just smiled and shook my head. That was probably the wrong thing to do because I realised too late that she was asking me if I wanted the greenery cutting off. Shame we didn’t have any rabbits with us because they would have feasted on that for a week.

I also bought some chipolatas de maison and some blue goats cheese – that’s blue cheese made from goats’ milk – not cheese from a blue goat.

In the evening, after a meal of the chipolatas, we (or rather, I) settled down to watch Town on BT Sport playing Tranmere. Danny Coyne was a guest pundit – having played for both clubs – but the big star that I missed was Wagner from X Factor. Evidently, the wife of one of the directors had met him somewhere and persuaded him to come to a game and sing “Sing when we’re fishing” and the “Fish” chant. In the game, we threw away an early lead and ending up drawing 1-1.

The day started with occasional rain. After a leisurely breakfast and servicing the van, we went for a drive into Orleans. As usual we’d decided to just drive and see where we ended up. Centre of the city was typical French architecture – which means it was pretty good. The Cathedral was spectacular. For some reason, the dashcam did not switch on so no footage of Orleans – but I’m sure we’ll be back one day and can put that right.

On the way back to the site, we found a local Eddie Leclerc so I spent my usual time browsing the French wine collection – and came across wine from Tauteval – which is where my brother-in-law, Paul, lives – and I think he helps with the vine harvest – so I bought a bottle.

When we got back to the site, the sun was shining so, for the only time on the holiday, we got the chairs out and sat in the sun.

After a tea of rump steak from Leclerc, Ellie and I went for a long walk and we actually walked into Orleans – I hadn’t realised that the city boundary was so close to the campsite.

We were moving on the next day. We had planned to spend a couple of nights near Sancerre because that seems to be the accepted boundary of the Val de Loire. So I spent a while on the laptop looking for a site near Sancerre but could not find one that I could book on line so made a note of a few numbers to ring in the morning.

First thing in the morning, I rang a couple of the numbers of potential sites that I’d seen the night before. One of them said they should be able to fit us in but she commented that they currently had a lot of people on site who were working bringing in the grape harvest and some of them left in the morning and did not come back at night (remember that for later).

We set off reasonably early. Tom tom was going to take us on a direct route to Sancerre so I changed it to point to various places along the Loire. One of those places was Sully-sur-Loire where we had breakfast in the car park of the château.

Mention the fleury village
Stop for lunch – couple with the picnic and the wine

From then on, the road took us away from the Loire and we travelled through what was fairly boring countryside. We eventually arrived the the camp site . The office was closed but we could see people of various nationalities and colours milling about – including kids and dog running around not on leads (the dogs, that is). Didn’t think too much of that but a 13 plate Autotrail parked up behind us and I got chatting to the driver. I mentioned to him about the conversation I had had with the receptionist earlier and said about the grape labourers. He said he had been on a site previously where the residents were similar and he said that he had even felt threatened by some of the more dubious looking characters. That set alarm bells ringing. His comment was long the lines of ‘well, we’ll only be staying one night, then’

The receptionist gave us a map of the site and said to look around to find a pitch so I took Ellie and went for a walk. I could hear some loud music and assumed that it was some kind of organised event on this or some neighbouring campsite. It turned out to be a beat up old white Peugot van which had its back doors open to reveal loads of bedding on the van floor. I didn’t see any people but they obviously didn’t give a toss about camp site etiquette.

I passed an Aire de Jeu and there were a couple of dubious looking characters sat on the see saw . They didn’t respond when I nodded and gave them my usual cheery ‘bonjour’

I saw the Autotrail man and his wife looking for a pitch and told them that I’d decided that we werent staying, I’d love to know whether they stayed but suspect that they didn’t. I went back into the office and told the girl that we wouldn’t be staying becuase it was too noisy and then we cleared off. There’s a lessone to be learned there for harvest time of year – I imagine that would not have been a pleasant stay.

We parked up in the town and looked at the Aires book and there was one that looked promisisng some 10 miles aways so off we went.

Mentionnd the town and the lack of services
When we got there

Mention the aire and the lack of service
Off we went agin
Lovely place where we ended up
Just us and a small van