Tuesday 8 November - Uzerche and Rocamadour

Where’s Colin? He's in the unofficial Aire, in the coach park at the chateau above Rocamadour.

Our day started with a run along the old railway line which runs alongside the river Vézére. I say 'run' but for the second mile it felt like I was achieving a slow shuffle and it was feeling far harder than it had any right to do. It was only when we turned to run back to Uzerche that I came to realise that the outward leg had been uphill. Naturally, the return was rather easier - so much so that we continued past Colin and explored the line in the other direction.

It's a pity my phone was strapped to my arm, rather than being in an accessible pocket, as a few photos of the stunning autumn colours in the valley wouldn't have gone amiss.

With showers and second breakfast had and the service point thoroughly used (Colin's water tank is now brimming), off we set and made it all of half a mile before declaring it time for elevenses. A stop for fuel and a mini-shopping trip had also featured in that half mile, so it wasn't entirely unreasonable to pause again.

Pastries eaten and coffee drunk, Colin was pointed towards Rocamadour with the highlight of the just-over-an-hour drive being the crossing of the Dordogne river, with the dramatic cliffs and the autumn colours.

I last visited Rocamadour sometime between the ages of 7 and 10, but still had a vague memory of the place and wanted to see it again. Unfortunately the sun was in the wrong place for me to capture a good representation of the view that has stuck in my memory for all of those years:

Note that the arrow points at a bit of the chateau which sits on the edge of the cliff atop a bit of an overhang. I'll come back to this later.

Shunning the lifts which can be used to take you down into the town, we took a stroll and spent a good while looking around the place* and wondering what it would be like in season. Apparently it's a real tourist/pilgrim hotspot, but today I don't think we even passed a dozen people in total on the streets. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the shops and restaurants were shut.

Looking back up at the town from below

We made our way slowly back up to Colin via the Sanctuary and its walkway which passes the twelve stations of the cross before leading you up the final incline to the chateau.

It costs €2, only payable via a €2 coin into an automatic turnstile, to visit the ramparts of the castle and as we only had one coin of the right denomination between us, Mick decreed that I should go and that he would go and put the kettle on. I'm not sure we fully thought that through given that I'm not always fond of walkways with big drops, although at the time we hadn't appreciated that the ramparts went all the way onto the top of that building marked with the arrow in the first photo above, which sits on the edge of the overhanging cliff.

Actually I didn't mind that bit, and even pulled out my phone for a snap of the valley to the east...

...and for a snap looking straight down to the main street (where the three people walking down there looked very small):


Reunited in the car park, we did briefly consider moving on in the late afternoon, just a few miles down the road, but decided that (aside from the church bells) we were almost guaranteed a quiet night here in the car park full of semi-feral cats. It looked for a while like it was going to be just us and another British van which had appeared whilst we were out, but just before dark French vans started rolling in - each making an incredible meal shunting about as if they were Goldilocks choosing the best bed. Based on the evidence we witnessed, we're far less fussy than most as to levelness, as I don't think there's anywhere in this car park even vaguely near to being slopey enough to have caused us to think about trying a different spot!


^{(*My first impression on reaching the main street was that if Disney was given the brief to create an historic French village built into a cliff, then this would be it.)}

Monday 7 November - Uzerche

Where’s Colin? He's at the Municipal Aire in Uzerche, where the water is turned on and there are toilets too. There should also be free electric, but we didn't even try any of the outlets due to the damaged state of them.

The notable feature of today was how wet it was. For hundreds of kilometres we drove through rain. In fact, I don't think it truly stopped all day, although it was (fortunately) very light by the time we reached our destination.

Our destination only became so at lunchtime when, having stopped at a convenient Aire in the hope of finding water (nope; switched off there too), I looked outside whilst making sandwiches and suggested that there was no point in arriving somewhere at 2pm when the weather was such that any foray outside would be as brief as possible. A far better use of the miserable day, it seemed to me, would be to just keep driving until an hour or two before dark. Mick agreed and between us that's what we did.

After a morning of fiddly roads (roundabouts, traffic lights, roadworks) and having to get around or through towns and villages, it was nice, a short while after lunch, to reach the A20 (toll-free) motorway where the SatNav told us to continue straight on for 227km. It would have been further if we hadn't opted to stop at the town of Uzerche for the night. Aside from the facilities at the Aire we were seduced by there being a disused railway line which will give us a place to run in the morning.

We had a quick shufty around the place this afternoon, albeit curtailed when the rain started getting too wet for us to want to be out in it. It looks a town with some history:

Sunday 6 November - Nonancourt

Where’s Colin? He’s at the Municipal Aire in Nonancourt, a little place that sits south of Rouen and west of Paris.

This trip started in the same place as the last one finished: with a night at the Municipal Aire in Wissant, just down the coast from Calais. We had thought we would arrive there in the dark last night, but Eurotunnel allowed us to cross an hour earlier than booked for no extra charge (even though the reason I hadn't booked an earlier crossing was because of how much more expensive they were). The crossing ran to time too (and almost empty), so we arrived in Wissant in the last dregs of daylight.

A significant lie-in was had this morning, but eventually a move was made southwards and, being Sunday, it was a quiet journey.

After a couple of hours I took over the driving on the basis that no navigation (navigation being my job) was going to be required between that point and Rouen. I'd only been behind the wheel for about three minutes when I pulled over again, but for good reason: an open boulangerie had been spotted.

A short while later I pulled over once more, so we could dispose of the yield of the boulangerie stop:


Suitably refuelled, onwards we went and an hour or so later sailed straight past the rest area where I was meant to hand the wheel back to Mick so as to resume my navigational duties. Doh!

A turn was then missed (SatNav's fault!), resulting in an 'interesting' time being had when we found ourselves going through, rather than around, Rouen (thank goodness it was Sunday!), involving a couple of sudden changes of direction to avoid going under a 2.6m bridge. Colin may have fitted as I'd like to think I was conservative when I measured his height at 2.62m, and I'd like to think that the bridge measurers were conservative in the other direction, but I opted not to find out.

It was raining when we reached Nonancourt, but, as it happened, we'd failed to stop for lunch en-route and by the time we had put that deficiency right it was dry again and stayed that way whilst we wandered a couple of miles around the town for a leg-stretch/look around.

This evening a couple of hours have been spent poring over books and maps and I'm still very little the wiser about where we're going overall and where we're aiming for tomorrow night. Wherever tomorrow takes us, a priority will be water. Just a few days ago this Aire had its water turned off for the winter, meaning we can't fill up here and we only have enough on board to see us through to tomorrow afternoon.

Five Attempts for Two Hills!

Bainloch Hill (NX893571; 287m)

My records tell me that Bainloch Hill was my 307^th Marilyn. It’s only a little thing too, yet it very nearly became the first one to defeat me. This is how it went:

Take 1

I had originally come up with a route using forest tracks on the south side of this hill, but having then discovered that everyone approaches from the ruined church to the east, I thought I’d go with the majority. Thus, off I set, in the rain, across a soggy field of long grass and reeds. Crossing the stream at the far side was easy enough, and I’d hit it at a point where I was able to step over the wall/fence combo the other side. Then it was a swathe of deeply waterlogged ground, followed by a bit of lovely cropped grass, before I reached another wall. Over that one I hopped too, whereupon I met bracken and fern. The former was dense, six feet tall, sodden, and getting wetter in the continuing rain.

I fought on for a while before sense got the better of me. I was only a third of the way to the top and was looking at having to fight through wet bracken for another 45 minutes if I continued, whereupon I would have to turn around and battle back down again. Or, I could come back on our way up north next May and do the route before the bracken starts to unfurl for its next season.

Arriving back at Colin I was met with an incredulous “Did you run?”. I’d covered 0.8 of a mile in total, in just over 40 minutes.

Take 2

Looking at the road atlas, I wasn’t too happy to leave this hill unclimbed, in view of the detour that would be required on any journey north in order to pick it up, so I thought I’d give my originally planned route (taken by no-one else, apparently), via Laggan, a go. That became a non-starter as I thought the track I needed to take looked far too much like someone’s drive, so Mick drove me just around the corner to take a different track instead.

There I was met with locked gates and a sign about the deer park’s opening times and entrance fees. Feeling a little uneasy as to whether the generous Scottish access laws allowed me to hop over these gates and use the track before me, I did hop the gates and made it all of fifty metres before I was met with a ‘forestry operations’ sign accompanied by a ‘no unauthorised persons beyond this point’ notice. Usually I ignore such notices, but combined with the locked gates and deer park signs, I turned back. As Mick was still at the entrance to the track, I had him drive me around the corner for:

Take 3

Back to the original plan, I figured I’d try the track-which-looked-like-a-private-drive and see what happened. Happily no-one challenged me, I found my track junction before the big house (although not without a little hesitation, as its entrance was a bit overgrown) … and a few minutes later came out on the track through the deer park!

However, I hadn’t jumped any fence, or walked past any signs denying access, so this time I was happy to continue. Or, at least I was until I reached another ‘no unauthorised persons’ sign, beyond which I could see an estate vehicle parked.

I gave up. Again.

Taking the deer park track all the way back to the road (after all, on the route I’d just taken there had been nothing to suggest I shouldn’t), my arrival at the locked gates was timed impeccably to coincide with the arrival of a Jeep, which I took to be one of the vehicles they use to give their tours. Not wanting to hop over the locked gates in front of such a person, I stood and waited for him to open them up, thinking that I could take the opportunity to ask him about access, and maybe cadge a lift to somewhere back up the track.

After a few minutes of waiting, in the rain (the rain hadn’t let up in all of this time) I decided I wasn’t going to wait around for an unknown length of time whilst he finished a phone call, so I hopped over the gate right in front of him after all.

That, I thought, was my attempts on this hill all exhausted and I trudged down the road (in the rain; did I mention the rain?) to find Mick in the local car park (a mile and a quarter covered on this attempt). Thinking I deserved a cup of tea by this time, I sat myself down and discovered a BT wifi hotspot. Making a quick visit to hill-bagging.co.uk to see if I could glean any other information, I found that someone had logged a visit to this hill just ten days ago, and had reported an unmapped track on the northwest side of the hill which gave easy access to within 300m of the summit.

Take 4

The person who had logged that route only gave two grid references in their description, but they told me everything I needed to know. Thus, in the rain (yep, still raining), I had a triumphant fourth attempt on this hill. And it really was ridiculously easy from the NW side. In fact, the track was such good going that I strode straight past the small break in the trees I needed and had to backtrack. The break didn’t involve any long grass, tussocks, bracken or bog, as these things are wont to do. No, this one was a breeze. Then, reaching the top of the forest it was just about 100m or so through heather to the summit. Needless to say, I was uncommonly happy to be there, even with the rain blowing in my face.

The total for Take 4 came in at 2.4 miles with around 200m of ascent.

Criffel (NX957618; 569m)

Arriving in the car park to the NW of Criffel, from where there runs a path all the way up to its summit, the sight of horizontal rain must have made Mick regret saying that he’d join me on this one.

He probably regretted it further when the excellent engineered path stopped abruptly at the edge of the forest, whereafter we trudged up the hillside where the erosion of the peaty surface was wide, and extensively running with water. We were also in the cloud by now. And exposed to the wind. I really can’t say it was good conditions to be going up a hill, but as this was my final one in this area, it had to be done.

We fought our way to the cairn and sploshed our way to the trig, before splashing our way back down the horribly-waterlogged hillside. Three and a third miles had been covered, with 500m of ascent and I was glad, as I peeled off my wet layers yet again that I wouldn’t have to put them back on again today!

Wednesday 2 March – Wissant

Where’s Colin? Much to his surprise, he’s at a Municipal Aire in Wissant. That’s not where he expected to be, but there was a late change of plan.

There was an early (by our recent standards) alarm this morning with the aim of getting on the road as soon after 8 as we could manage. After a few days of doing very little except driving, I fancied getting to our destination early today so that we could get out for a walk. A place just south of Bolougne-sur-Mer was our chosen destination, where €7 would get us a pitch at a commercial Aire with direct access onto the coastal paths.

The plan persisted until about an hour and a half before we reached our destination, by which time we couldn’t deny that the forecast had become reality. With the wind coming from the west at over 50mph, and with frequent wintery squalls blowing through, sitting on a west-facing coast wasn’t looking like the most sensible choice. Plus, my desire to go for a decent length of walk along that coast was waining by the minute.

The replan was formed whilst we sat in Lidl’s car park in Bolougne, waiting for a dry spell before we dashed into the store. I had thought that we would have to pay for our parking tonight, as all the Aire’s I’d noted previously had fees, so when I saw that the town of Wissant (between Bolougne and Calais) has provided a free Aire, which isn’t immediately on the seafront, it seemed an obvious choice to head here.

Our brief stroll down to the beach saw us wrapped up like Michellin Men, with full waterproofs on top of our insulating layers. That did keep us warm and dry, but it wasn’t enough to make us want to explore for any distance against that wind.

Tomorrow, the Chunnel awaits. Our crossing may be preceded by another quick shopping trip, as a quantity of the cheese we bought earlier this afternoon seems to have disappeared…

Tuesday 1 March–Bonneval

Where’s Colin? He’s at a Municipal Aire at Bonneval at N48º10.771’, E1º23.304’.

Leaving Mick to put the bed away and do all the pre-journey chores, my day started with a quick speed walk around the village (Mick has a poorly calf muscle at the moment, ruling out fast walking or running). Fortunately he adn’t left without me by the time I returned!

We were, however, soon on the road and much driving did ensue, although we did splurge some of yesterday’s saved tolls, having remembered that the section of free-road between Tours and Poitiers is a tedious succession of roundabouts and traffic lights every two minutes. It all required a bit of navigational attention on my part, as not only did our SatNav want to take us some ‘interesting’ routes today, but it also doesn’t have a handy setting that says ‘just follow the toll road for Xkm, then don’t allow tolls for the rest of the day’, nor does it have a setting that says ‘no matter what the speed limit, we’re only going to be cruising at 90kmph, so please choose the best route on that basis’ (it’s a weakness that the SatNav thinks that we’ll do at least 110kmph on a motorway and thus plans a route based on that false premise).

Chartres had been our intended end point for today, with the thought that we could take a tea-time stroll to look at the magnificent cathedral. However, as we got nearer and the day got duller, I consulted a weather forecast which stated a 100% chance of rain after 4pm. Would we want to walk into a town in the rain so late in the day? No, was the short answer. It being gone 2pm by the time that decision was made, and with our lunch-stop having been omitted*, we re-directed ourselves towards Bonneval, which lies just a stone’s throw off-route.

Exiting the car park, via a bridge over the Loir, it is apparent that this town isn’t young.

The Aire is in the car park next to the hospital. Quite an impressive building for part of a hospital!

Another shot of the Loir as it runs through the town

With a very late lunch consumed, and only a light drizzle falling, off we went for a brief look at the town and to stock up on a few driving essentials (like a big bag of crisps to sustain us when no suitable lunch-stop presents itself). Even though it took us a while to pass the initiative test as to how to get into the huge (and slightly structurally unsound) church which sits in this town, we managed to make it back to Colin just ahead of the proper rain. We’re now sitting looking through rain-streaked windows, but at least it’s going to be warmer tonight.

(*oddly, no suitable lunch stops were seen until we made the decision to skip lunch and cut short the day, then there were laybys everywhere we looked).

(Electrical update: After continuing intermittent functioning of speeds 1, 2 and 3 on the cab fan, I lay uncomfortably under the dashboard yesterday and established the whereabouts of the fan motor and that there are two electrical connectors going into the bottom of it. When the fan stopped working again shortly into this morning’s drive, I gave the wires a bit of a poke with my toe. The fan immediately sprang back into life, suggesting that a lose wire is the cause of the problem. As an aside, the failure of the fan two days ago caused some discomfort, as every time we turned it off max (which is loud!) the temperature immediately plummetted (we were driving through snow at the time). It was about three hours later that I nipped into the back for a bag of crisps and found that the skylight was open. Ooops.)

Monday 29 February–Roullet St Estephe

Where’s Colin? He’s in the Municipal Aire at Roullet St Estephe (N45 34.812’, E0 2.681’), which is the same place as he spent the night of 11 January, when we were Spain-bound.

The church at Roullet St Estephe under a glorious sky

Today has consisted of driving and very little else, almost exactly retracing our tyre-tracks of the 12 January. The only difference today (except that it was warmer, and that we enjoyed clear blue skies for the second half of the journey) was that whereas on our southbound journey we used toll motorways to avoid lengths of road which looked like they would be a tedious trial of roundabouts and traffic lights, today we went for a cheaper option, reducing out outbound outlay of €23 to just €6.20.

I was most bemused by the bit where we left the motorway at the junction immediately before the toll plaza and rejoined at the next junction a few miles further on, and thus avoided paying at all for that section. The SatNav had said it would be so, but I really did expect to find a toll barrier on the exit or entry slip. Meanwhile, we saw not another vehicle on the service-road-esque road which ran almost parallel to the motorway.

By the time we arrived here at 3.30 this afternoon, the extent of my exercise today had been a walk over to the toilet block* this morning for another shower and a walk to a bin when we stopped for lunch, so it probably goes without saying that we went out for a walk when we got here. Can’t say it’s a particularly interesting place to go for a walk, mind, unless you count the detour to patisserie :-).

(*Incidentally, yesterday’s campsite was by far the nicest we’ve stayed on this trip, even if I didn’t approve of the entirely unisex nature of the toilet/shower block. It’s so integrated that girls have to walk past the men’s urinals to get to the toilets.)