Where's Bertie? He's in a small Aire in the town of Turquant. Exact location: 47.22375, 0.02879.
Weather: Fine, but cool start (6 degrees), drizzly middle, then sunny intervals at destination (15 deg).
A quiet night was had in Montguyon, until sometime just pre-dawn when the local cockerel decided it was time for us to be awake. At 0645 the church bells went into crazy mode too, just in case anyone had slept through the crowing. We weren't too upset; our alarm was set for 7 anyway.
We'd expected to spend the night alone at the Aire (the main road from the N10 being closed at the moment), but at some point we had been joined by one other van. No idea how late they arrived, but they were showing no signs of life as we left.
Given the option between run/walking a route from Montguyon (main feature: a dolmen), or driving 14km along the road for a route from Guizengeard (main feature: flooded quarry pits), we opted for the latter. It looked from the map like the Montguyon route would involve too much tarmac. We have no idea what we missed in making that decision, but we were very happy with what we got.
At first I had misgivings. The paths had lots of protruding roots and, worse, small tree stumps, and in places they were rather waterlogged.
Initial bit of path
Then we we got to the second flooded quarry:
It really was this colour
Others were various shades of dull turquoise, but only this one (of the few we passed) was this startling shade
Some forest tracks, then field boundaries through green countryside, looped us back to Bertie.
There's Bertie, patiently waiting for us.
Outline route and key stats
Once Bertie's nose was pointed northwards again, and he'd negotiated two sets of roadworks and some small roads of varying quality, I had a look to see if there was a convenient supermarket with laundry machines in its car park, that was right next to our route north, and that we would pass after about 2 hours of driving. Incredibly, I found exactly that, and at 1pm on the dot we drove a couple of hundred metres from the motorway, parked right next to the laundrette, and were thus able to multi-task having lunch whilst doing laundry.
Lunch and the laundry ended at about the same time, and within an hour of stopping, we were on the road again.
I have pins all over Google Maps, some of which have notes that say 'ExPAWers', with a little description as to why I pinned it (the ExPAWers = couple with a YouTube channel; they go to a lot of places we like the look of, so I make a note for future reference). One of those pins was in Turquant, alongside the Loire, which was close enough to our route north for us to include it in this trip.
We arrived early enough for a quick look around today:
Troglodyte houses, built into an escarpment that sits a few hundred metres away from the river are the main attraction hereabouts
We're also only a few minutes walk away from the S bank of the Loire.
We will explore further tomorrow before continuing our way north, but based on today's short excursion this place deserves more attention than the short time we're going to be able to give it on this trip.
Weather: Fine, but cool start (6 degrees), drizzly middle, then sunny intervals at destination (15 deg).
A quiet night was had in Montguyon, until sometime just pre-dawn when the local cockerel decided it was time for us to be awake. At 0645 the church bells went into crazy mode too, just in case anyone had slept through the crowing. We weren't too upset; our alarm was set for 7 anyway.
We'd expected to spend the night alone at the Aire (the main road from the N10 being closed at the moment), but at some point we had been joined by one other van. No idea how late they arrived, but they were showing no signs of life as we left.
Given the option between run/walking a route from Montguyon (main feature: a dolmen), or driving 14km along the road for a route from Guizengeard (main feature: flooded quarry pits), we opted for the latter. It looked from the map like the Montguyon route would involve too much tarmac. We have no idea what we missed in making that decision, but we were very happy with what we got.
At first I had misgivings. The paths had lots of protruding roots and, worse, small tree stumps, and in places they were rather waterlogged.
Then we we got to the second flooded quarry:
Some forest tracks, then field boundaries through green countryside, looped us back to Bertie.
Once Bertie's nose was pointed northwards again, and he'd negotiated two sets of roadworks and some small roads of varying quality, I had a look to see if there was a convenient supermarket with laundry machines in its car park, that was right next to our route north, and that we would pass after about 2 hours of driving. Incredibly, I found exactly that, and at 1pm on the dot we drove a couple of hundred metres from the motorway, parked right next to the laundrette, and were thus able to multi-task having lunch whilst doing laundry.
Lunch and the laundry ended at about the same time, and within an hour of stopping, we were on the road again.
I have pins all over Google Maps, some of which have notes that say 'ExPAWers', with a little description as to why I pinned it (the ExPAWers = couple with a YouTube channel; they go to a lot of places we like the look of, so I make a note for future reference). One of those pins was in Turquant, alongside the Loire, which was close enough to our route north for us to include it in this trip.
We arrived early enough for a quick look around today:
We're also only a few minutes walk away from the S bank of the Loire.
We will explore further tomorrow before continuing our way north, but based on today's short excursion this place deserves more attention than the short time we're going to be able to give it on this trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment