Monday 18 March 2019

Monday 18 March - Saint Genouph

Where's Bertie? He's at an Aire in the small settlement of Saint Genouph, which sits around 4 miles to the west of Tours. It's free to stay here with free water, waste and wifi. Exact location: 47.37686, 0.60185.
Weather: Sunny intervals this morning, followed by a showery afternoon.

We'd not long arrived at a lake on the outskirts of the town of Châtelleraut this morning (only about 6km from last night's Aire) when Mick, in reaching into Bertie's garage for a bottle of water, asked why it was wet in there. A few minutes later and we had the entire contents of the garage spread over the two adjacent parking areas and a significant mopping-up operation was in progress. We've ruled out a couple of possibilities as to where the water came from and think (and are very much hoping!) that it was the result of a spillage from not putting a lid on one of the bottles sometime over the last few days, rather than a leak.

With everything dried as best we could and re-stowed, it was just a little later than intended when I set out for my run. I could have run from where we spent last night, but that would have involved little roads. By relocating to the lake, I had a forest full of trails at my disposal. In fact, so many trails that it took quite a bit of navigating to find the ones that formed the particular route I was trying to follow. That route (which is also a Strava Segment, which is how I found it) is 7.5 miles long, but parking on the other side of the lake from the start point, then doing a couple of circuits of the water at the end, brought it up to 10 miles, which I adjudged to be enough for today. Running around a forest may be conveniently traffic free (although I did have a bit of excitement with logging operations), but with a lack of views there's not much by way of visual distraction.


There are a lot of junctions to be navigated in that forest!

Looking across the lake towards Bertie

It must have been approaching the middle of the day by the time we pointed Bertie north to come to Saint Genouph, and there was a necessary stop at a supermarket en-route. I can't report on whether it's an interesting village that's hosting us tonight. The tiredness I was suffering before this morning's run was not improved by the exercise and this afternoon's showers have provided further excuse to do nothing. Thus I have not stepped outside of Bertie's door since we arrived and if I do so later it will only be to venture as far as the bin or the drain. On that basis, I would say it wasn't worth us coming here, except that it did move us a further hour and a half towards Calais, which is where we need to be by the end of the week.

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