Where's Bertie? He's currently all alone at an Aire in the small town of Montguyon (NE of Bordeaux). Exact location: 45.21774, -0.18307
Weather: Sunny and warm.
It was just before 10am when we got on the road this morning. Not the most efficient start to the day, but at least we were still at the Aire when the bread van came around, so I finally got the chocolatine that I wanted yesterday.
The intention for the journey from Badajoz to Calais was to split it into roughly even 200km sections, and whilst we've already deviated from that, I'd started my day by looking for somewhere that was roughly that distance ahead of us. Montguyon is where I settled on, although having looked at walking routes from here and from another town around 20km away, we may well choose to move on before exercising in the morning. We still came here, on the basis that it has an official motorhome parking area.
The plan was nearly scuppered. Once again, Google kept reporting increasing delays ahead of us, and when I looked at the detail there was a 55 minute delay to get around Bordeaux. The benefit of having your house with you is that you can change your mind about where you're staying at the drop of a hat, so we pulled into a car park just by J18 of the A63 for lunch, and possibly to stay the night if the road situation didn't improve. The next time I looked the delay around Bordeaux was improving, but the N10 (the road we needed to take north of Bordeaux) was closed.
As I served up pudding (strawberries and ice cream; a step up on our usual post-lunch biscuit or strip of chocolate), I checked the road situation again: all delays/closures had cleared. Excellent timing.
There's not much to Montguyon. It's a small and quiet town (I know that mid-afternoon is not the best time to judge these things, but there were quite a few empty shops, few others were open and people were scarce)...
If abducted by aliens and abandoned here, you'd not struggle to guess you were in France.
... but it does have a castle, dating from the 11th century, and not in fanctastic condition:
From by the Aire
Close up. It was closed, but we stopped to read the sign about its history.
Looking down from the castle. Bertie's down there.
With nothing else obvious to see or do in the immediate vicinity (and it was now gone 4pm, so we weren't after much to do), we retraced our steps to the Patisserie.
Purely in the interests of thanking the town for the Aire, not because we're cake fiends...
Weather: Sunny and warm.
It was just before 10am when we got on the road this morning. Not the most efficient start to the day, but at least we were still at the Aire when the bread van came around, so I finally got the chocolatine that I wanted yesterday.
The intention for the journey from Badajoz to Calais was to split it into roughly even 200km sections, and whilst we've already deviated from that, I'd started my day by looking for somewhere that was roughly that distance ahead of us. Montguyon is where I settled on, although having looked at walking routes from here and from another town around 20km away, we may well choose to move on before exercising in the morning. We still came here, on the basis that it has an official motorhome parking area.
The plan was nearly scuppered. Once again, Google kept reporting increasing delays ahead of us, and when I looked at the detail there was a 55 minute delay to get around Bordeaux. The benefit of having your house with you is that you can change your mind about where you're staying at the drop of a hat, so we pulled into a car park just by J18 of the A63 for lunch, and possibly to stay the night if the road situation didn't improve. The next time I looked the delay around Bordeaux was improving, but the N10 (the road we needed to take north of Bordeaux) was closed.
As I served up pudding (strawberries and ice cream; a step up on our usual post-lunch biscuit or strip of chocolate), I checked the road situation again: all delays/closures had cleared. Excellent timing.
There's not much to Montguyon. It's a small and quiet town (I know that mid-afternoon is not the best time to judge these things, but there were quite a few empty shops, few others were open and people were scarce)...
... but it does have a castle, dating from the 11th century, and not in fanctastic condition:
With nothing else obvious to see or do in the immediate vicinity (and it was now gone 4pm, so we weren't after much to do), we retraced our steps to the Patisserie.
What! No second breakfast today?
ReplyDeleteI ate my chocolatine before we left Capbreton, so I think that falls into the 'second breakfast' rather than 'elevenses' bracket. Now I think about it, chocolatine for second breakfast, strawberries and ice cream at lunch and those tarts after tea does sound a bit excessive for one day!
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