Thursday 5 October 2017

Thursday 5 October - Villedômer

Where's Bertie? He's in a Municipal Aire in the village of Villedômer, just to the north of Tours (exact location: 47.54443, 0.88696).
Weather: Very windy and a bit wet this morning, much calmer and drier this afternoon, with even a bit of sunshine being seen.

The Aire in Wissant (where we would have spent last night, had it not been full) sits adjacent to a road and thus does suffer a bit from the noise of passing traffic, albeit there is only a small amount at night. The Aire where we ended up was well set back in a village, behind the church and next to the community hall (which, fortunately, wasn't home to an event last night), and thus should have given us an excellent night's sleep.

What we hadn't expected was the wind. We had noted that it was a bit breezy as we drove there from Calais, but at the point that we went to bed it wasn't that brutal. By morning I was beginning to feel like being on the ferry to Santander would have involved less side to side movement overnight!

It was because of the wind that our start time was pushed back by a couple of hours this morning, and thus it was approaching 10am when we hit the road. With a big day ahead of us, that was not ideal, but as driving a light-weight high-sided vehicle in strong winds is no fun, it was the sensible choice.

The next eight hours were taken up with driving, with only the shortest of breaks (starting at breakfast, each time we had hot drinks, I boiled up some more water for the flask, so that when we stopped we didn't have to waste time waiting for the kettle to boil).

The most notable point of the day was the near repetition of the navigational error we made around Rouen in November last year, when we ended up going through the centre of town and having fun trying to avoid a 2.6m height limit. Remembering that error, I was trying to pay great attention to avoid making the same mistake again, but, alas, the SatNav fooled me again into following the 'keep in the left lane' verbal instruction when it meant (and the visual showed) 'take the exit, right'. We managed to perform a u-turn almost as soon as we realised the error this time, but next time we *will* get that bit right!

We've ended our day in a pleasant Aire, surrounded by greeness, just a minute or so away from the centre of Villedômer. After a day of sitting, our first priority on arriving, and before the light started to fade, was to go for a bit of exercise and that we did, taking in all of the main streets of the place at least once. That has acquainted us with the location of the boulangerie, which I will be visiting in the morning, just as I did in Audinghen this morning. When in France ... eat croissant, and all that.


As we walked into the village square I exclaimed "Doesn't it look French!". As if to prove my point, we rounded the corner and there was parked a 2CV.

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