Where’s Colin? He’s at a Municipal Aire at Bonneval at N48º10.771’, E1º23.304’.
Leaving Mick to put the bed away and do all the pre-journey chores, my day started with a quick speed walk around the village (Mick has a poorly calf muscle at the moment, ruling out fast walking or running). Fortunately he adn’t left without me by the time I returned!
We were, however, soon on the road and much driving did ensue, although we did splurge some of yesterday’s saved tolls, having remembered that the section of free-road between Tours and Poitiers is a tedious succession of roundabouts and traffic lights every two minutes. It all required a bit of navigational attention on my part, as not only did our SatNav want to take us some ‘interesting’ routes today, but it also doesn’t have a handy setting that says ‘just follow the toll road for Xkm, then don’t allow tolls for the rest of the day’, nor does it have a setting that says ‘no matter what the speed limit, we’re only going to be cruising at 90kmph, so please choose the best route on that basis’ (it’s a weakness that the SatNav thinks that we’ll do at least 110kmph on a motorway and thus plans a route based on that false premise).
Chartres had been our intended end point for today, with the thought that we could take a tea-time stroll to look at the magnificent cathedral. However, as we got nearer and the day got duller, I consulted a weather forecast which stated a 100% chance of rain after 4pm. Would we want to walk into a town in the rain so late in the day? No, was the short answer. It being gone 2pm by the time that decision was made, and with our lunch-stop having been omitted*, we re-directed ourselves towards Bonneval, which lies just a stone’s throw off-route.
Exiting the car park, via a bridge over the Loir, it is apparent that this town isn’t young.
The Aire is in the car park next to the hospital. Quite an impressive building for part of a hospital!
Another shot of the Loir as it runs through the town
With a very late lunch consumed, and only a light drizzle falling, off we went for a brief look at the town and to stock up on a few driving essentials (like a big bag of crisps to sustain us when no suitable lunch-stop presents itself). Even though it took us a while to pass the initiative test as to how to get into the huge (and slightly structurally unsound) church which sits in this town, we managed to make it back to Colin just ahead of the proper rain. We’re now sitting looking through rain-streaked windows, but at least it’s going to be warmer tonight.
(*oddly, no suitable lunch stops were seen until we made the decision to skip lunch and cut short the day, then there were laybys everywhere we looked).
(Electrical update: After continuing intermittent functioning of speeds 1, 2 and 3 on the cab fan, I lay uncomfortably under the dashboard yesterday and established the whereabouts of the fan motor and that there are two electrical connectors going into the bottom of it. When the fan stopped working again shortly into this morning’s drive, I gave the wires a bit of a poke with my toe. The fan immediately sprang back into life, suggesting that a lose wire is the cause of the problem. As an aside, the failure of the fan two days ago caused some discomfort, as every time we turned it off max (which is loud!) the temperature immediately plummetted (we were driving through snow at the time). It was about three hours later that I nipped into the back for a bag of crisps and found that the skylight was open. Ooops.)
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