Sunday 15 September - Provins

Where's Bertie? He's in an Aire in Provins, where it costs €8 for 24 hours. Exact location: 48.562044, 3.279718
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and warm (20 degrees)

We were in no rush to leave Troyes this morning, so it was a leisurely start. Mick took a run along a canal whilst I pottered, then we started getting ready to travel. Possibly because we were in no rush, we achieved readiness with unusual efficiency, and there was no queue at the service point either.

With Aldi being almost next door to the Aire, I could have walked there whilst Mick was out for a run, but instead we made it our first stop. In France it only seems to be the really big supermarkets that have self-service tills. That causes a problem in the smaller shops, as it's common for people to pop in just for a baguette. Being British, we feel obliged to allow someone to go ahead of us if they've only got one or two items (something that we don't often observe the French doing), which means we can be at the till for quite some time if people keep coming along with just a bit of bread. Love them or hate them, self-service tills are really convenient for this scenario.

Quick pitstop completed, onwards to Provins, chosen purely as it was a convenient location for our onward plans (actually, not that convenient, but as convenient as I could find for official motorhome parking, and we didn't want to risk a disturbed night in a random car park tonight). Lots of the reviews on Park4Night said it was expensive just for a patch of car park with a sub-standard service point (one tap shared for drinking water and toilet cassette cleaning). A few reviews even said that the town wasn't even interesting. Our expectations were thus low.

Greeted at the entrance to the car park by two parking attendants, they gave us directions (in rather rapid French) to the motorhome parking, which turns out to be closer to the town than the car parking. We are looking out of Bertie's windscreen at the town walls, which was the first sign of promise that this might be an interesting place.

A couple of minutes walk along the road. Notice the chap in costume.

Looking along les remparts

What we found inside the walls felt like a cross between an open-air museum and a film set. The former was based on the fact that there were a lot of people around (more than we've ever seen in any sort of museum) and they were all clearly tourists.

Town street

We opted not to pay the entrance fee to go into Caesar's Tower.

But we did go into the church

Far brighter and airier than most churches.

Heading out of the mediaeval town, down into the 'new' town we went, although that was mainly half-timbered houses and clearly not very new at all. Through a rather nice park, beyond which an equally nice tree-lined promenade took us back to the ramparts.

The day had warmed up by now and as we climbed up to the top of the wall, then proceeded along it, having to ascend and descend for every tower along the section that was open for public access, we regretted not wearing shorts.

View into the old town from the ramparts (note the artist in the bottom right; there were lots of them dotted around the town, presumably on an organised painting holiday)

Along the wall

Coming back through the town, trouble was had finding an ice cream vendor who hadn't run out of cones. It was third time lucky. Then back to Bertie with me opining that of all the mediaeval towns/villages we've visited on this trip, this one was the best.