Made it to the seaside - heading home

Saturday 21 September 2024

Nido's parked up at Ardres.  Not strictly an aire, but just a parking area, it's where we normally stop for our first and last night in France as it's quiet and only twenty minutes' drive to Calais. The alarm's set for 0500 tomorrow morning, to catch our 0748 tunnel back to the UK.

On Thursday, as Cathy was online for 2.5 hours on her Welsh language course, I decided to ride some of the excellent Avenue Verte cycle path.  Tarmaced and as wide as a single lane road, it mostly runs along a disused railway line.  This particular one starts in Dieppe and runs all the way to the outskirts of Paris.  In fact I rode the full length in 2008 with a group when we rode from Fareham to Paris, raising money for our local children's Hospice.

This time I rode from Forges-les-Eaux, heading north as far as Neufchatel-en-Bray and return, a total distance of about 24 miles.  The weather was lovely - warm, sunny with a gentle breeze from the south.  There were a few cyclists and walkers on the route, but mostly I had it all to myself.  The only issue I had was the many acorns on the path trying to take my wheels from under me!  My intention was to get to Neufchatel, have a coffee and return.  But on arrival there was only one suitable café open and I didn't like the feel there, so turned around and headed back south.  Luckily, there was a small café right next to the path, so I was able to get my coffee fix.  I'm sure we stopped here when I did the ride in 2008.  Refreshed I cycled back to the van and once Cathy had finished her lesson we packed up and drove to the vets at Buchy.  Salty took his worming tablets (cunningly disguised in some cheese and ham!) and whimpered through the rabies booster.  

Café next to the cycle path

All sorted, we drove 45 minutes to the free aire in Songeons.  We stayed here last year when we walked up to the old village of Gerberoy.  But as we'd had a busy day and Salty was feeling sorry for himself after being jabbed, we just chilled outside our large hedge lined pitch.  I walked in to town to buy a few items in the shop and with the intention of getting a takeaway pizza.  However, the pizza place was closed for a week, so a chicken kebab came a close second!  The kebab shop didn't open until 6pm; luckily the village Bar/Tabac was just across the square, so I was able to sit outside with a beer and wait for the doors to open!  We enjoyed our kebab sat outside in the evening warmth.

Waiting for the kebab shop to open?

Recovering from his rabies booster - poor pup!

Friday was warm and sunny again as we drove 1.5 hours up to the coast at Cayeux-sur-Mer.  The CCP aire is set back about 500m from the beach.  We had a lovely walk along the wooden promenade checking out the individual names of the many beach huts - rock and roll lifestyle!  Salty enjoyed a splash around in the waves.  We wanted some patisserie and the boulangerie was opening at 3pm.  Luckily there was a bar opposite so we sat with a beer until it opened - there's a theme to our shopping over the last couple of days!  For dinner I made some bruschetta topping using up the remaining vegetables, eaten with the baguette toasted, rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil - that should keep the mozzies at bay!

Waiting for the boulangerie to open this time....honest!

This morning we serviced the van for the last time this trip and drove up to Ardres, stopping off at a Le Clerc supermarket on the way to buy the fresh foodstuffs to take home and fill up the diesel tank.  I walked into town to buy a baguette for tomorrow's breakfast on the train, plus some patisserie to take to our daughter's house; we're going to break our journey there and finish the drive home on Monday.

So that's it for this trip.  We've cut it short by a week as next week's weather forecast is poor, so there wasn't much point hanging around in the van in the rain.

It's warmer up north

Wednesday 18 September 2024

Nido's parked up on the aire in Forges-Les-Eaux.  We've stayed here a few times; it has large tarmac pitches with electric, a nice view over the fields and is on a natural route travelling from and to Calais.   It's very warm out this evening with a large harvest moon. We'll stay here until tomorrow afternoon as Cathy has her first online Welsh language lesson of the new academic year, then we have to drive fifteen minutes to Buchy for Salty's appointment with the Vetty Man; I've had a text saying he'll be seen by Docteur Vet William Addey.  It's almost like he's seeing a hair stylist, rather than taking his worming tablet and having a rabies booster!

Yesterday was a bit of a transit day to get us this far north.  The drive was about 2.5 hours and included a stop at a Super U Hypermarket.  We had a list of food and stuff we want to take home, as well as a few presents for those who have looked after our garden and kept an eye on the house.  Luckily Cathy is very good at packing, as we bought A LOT of things - in fact €267 worth of things! They're all safely stowed under the bench seat and I've kept the receipt in case 'the Revenue' want to see proof of purchase when we book in for the Shuttle.  There's only a couple of bottles of wine and a few beers though (all of those are presents) and the rest is food, coffee etc.  Once that mammoth task was done, we carried on to the Camping Car Park aire at Lyons-la-Forêt.  The CCP app said the place was full, but I've known this to be inaccurate before and sure enough there were about four spaces.  We managed to bag the pitch right at the end with the sliding door opening out on to a fence and hedge, which provided privacy for us but, more importantly, meant nobody would be walking by to freak Salty out.  He's fine with people but definitely not fine with other dogs - long story based around a sad and cruel first year until he was rescued and re-homed with us - poor dog (on both counts!).

oooh - new chairs!

It was hot and sunny, so we sat outside for a quick lunch before taking a walk through the beech forest to walk around the village.  Recognised as one of the 'beautiful villages of France, Lyons-la-Forêt is a hidden gem situated in the heart of Normandy’s largest forest, the Forêt domaniale de Lyons-La-Forêt, which covers an enormous 11,000 acres. There's an array of magnificent half-timbered, pink brick or tinted cob (clay and straw) houses. The village boasts tearooms, little restaurants, the odd hotel, antiques shops and the beautiful 18th-century timber-framed covered market. A long street leads you beside the Lieure river to the picturesque Church of Saint-Denis, which dates from the 12th to the 16th century. This little village, with some 800 inhabitants, became a favourite place for the cultured individual to come and find peace and for artists to find inspiration. The composer Maurice Ravel even penned some of his most beautiful pieces of music here and we walked past the house where he lived, complete with ornate, green-glazed chimney pots.

Ravel's house is the big one in the background with the pointy roof

Ravel's house (courtesy of the Lyons Andelle Tourist Information website)

Back at the van we sat outside with an ice lolly and cold drink, next to the clear chalk stream flowing alongside the site.  Cathy made a delicious Thai chicken soup and, back on EHU, we did some more YouTube catch up before I caught up on Môn SAR training group emails.

This morning we drove a short distance to the aire in the small village of Saint Saire.  It's on a square patch of grass next to the Avenue Verte cycle path, which used to be a railway line.  The adjacent railway station is now a restaurant and café, but wasn't open today.  The original plan was to stay here tonight and tomorrow for Cathy's Welsh lesson and I'd go for a bike ride to a town up the cycle path in search for a coffee.  However, the small village had a busy cut-through road next to the aire and the grass area felt a bit exposed.  Added to that, the internet signal was too weak for a 2.5 hour Teams video call, so we decided not to stay.  

However, an interesting looking 6km circular walk started from the railway station, so we had a cup of tea and headed off south along the cycle path.  It was a warm and sunny day with a steady breeze and we enjoyed the stroll, listening to the birds and watching the leaves fall as autumn marched on.  A combination of cycle path, lanes and sunken paths, we wandered past fields of maize and cattle, old farms and charming cottages.

Once abundant hedgerow destroyed by the flailing machine

....all in the name of 'tidiness'

The drive to Forges-Les-Eaux was only ten minutes and after I'd paid at the campsite on the opposite side of the road, we sat outside in the warm sunshine with a cup of tea and a shared lemon tart.  The rest of the day was spent relaxing, reading, snoozing and eating dinner.  All is quiet now and it's an early night, ready for a busy day tomorrow.

Christening a new Camping Car Park aire

Monday 16 September 2024

Nido's parked up on a free aire in Courville-sur-Eure, about 15 minutes outside Chartres.  There's eight grass pitches separated by tall laurel hedges; we were lucky enough to bag the last available space, on the end next to the river Eure.  We're having a quiet afternoon and evening after a morning of shopping, our nightmare activity!

Yesterday we drove for about an hour to the village of Voves, Les Villages Vovéens.  Search for Sites described it a four pitch aire next to a fishing and boating late.  As we approached the satnav co-ordinates I could see the entrance to a Camping Car Park site and, sure enough, this has replaced the old aire.  It's a brand new CCP aire and I think we were the first paying customers.  Everything was brand new and sparkling clean; there was still a thin plastic film on the EHU bollard and I had to set the breaker to switch it on. There was one motorhome already there, but it turns out this belonged to the CCP 'Ambassador', who had come to check all was working on this new site.  He came over, introduced himself and explained the newness.  As we were the first customers I thought we may get a free night or some sort of tacky goody!  No luck, but he did give us a paper map showing all the CCP sites, which I suppose is fine until another new one opens!

We took a walk around the two lakes, watching families enjoy the warm autumn sunshine and sat outside the van with a cup of tea.  Back on unplanned electric hook up, we charged up all the things and watched some YouTube before bed.

Today was planned as a second Admin day (I filled up the LPG tanks yesterday), so first thing we drove into Chartres to the outside laundrette at the Intermarché supermarket.  Clothes spinning, I did a little food top up shop whilst Cathy made egg and bacon toasted sandwiches and a pot of tea, consumed in the car park watching people come and go.  It's not all Instagram sunsets and beaches! 

The Berger Loisirs motorhome and caravan accessories franchise had a store in Chartres and we've been on the lookout for new outside chairs for a while; our current ones are over ten years old and are held together with goodwill and duct tape!  We visited their Arras store earlier on this trip and had an eye on one particular style.  They would need to fit in the limited garage space under the bed, so we had the rough dimensions of the available space.  But the chairs we liked the look of were too big and weren't very comfortable. There was a Decathlon store about 5km away, so we drove there and managed to buy two new reclining chairs which fold flat and fit under the garage.  They were also €40 cheaper.

Shopping nightmare over, we drove here, parked up and had a cup of tea, sat on our new chairs - very comfy.  We walked Salty along the river and around a large fishing lake.  I didn't sleep well last night, awake at 0200 and sat up with a cup of tea at 0400, so I had much needed nap.  Dinner tonight is a fish curry, using a Spice Tailor Keralan coconut curry mix, before perhaps a bit more YouTube catch up.

The weather's supposed to be a bit sunnier and warmer this week.  Yesterday was lovely, although today is cloudy and breezy.  Having said that, I'm still in shorts and t-shirt and have been all this trip so far.  As we head north over the next couple of days, we're hoping to get in one beach walk this trip before we head home....back to our daily beach walk!

Guédelon Castle - incredible

Saturday 14 September 2024

Nido's parked up on a grass area by the river Loire, with six other vans.  We're in the village of Jargeau, not far from Orléans, in the Loire Valley.  The brown river is wide, flowing at quite a pace and, with the trees dripping in moss and mistletoe along the river, it has the feel of the Mississippi. It's dark, it's quiet and it's a nice place to drop anchor for the night.

I don't have a bucket list; I don't believe in it.  But one of the places I've wanted to visit for over 25 years, since we watched it on TV with our children, is the building of a castle in the old quarry in Guédelon, near Treigny.  The castle is the focus of an  experimental archaeology project aimed at recreating a 13th-century castle and its environment using period building techniques, dress, and materials.

Materials, including wood and stone, are all obtained locally. Jacques Moulin, chief architect for the project, designed the castle according to the architectural model developed during the 12th and 13th centuries by Phillip II of France.  

Construction started in 1997 under Michel Guyot, owner of Chateau de Saint-Fargeau, a castle in Saint-Fargeau, 13km away. The site was chosen according to the availability of construction materials: an abandoned stone quarry in a large forest, with a nearby pond.  Building work continues and it will carry on for many years to come.

There's ample parking for motorhomes if you arrive early and it currently costs €16 per person, which I think is a very reasonable fee.

Once paid and in, the area opened up in front of us.  We could see the main construction of the castle, but decided to leave that until we'd visited everything else. All around the castle, as it would have been in the 13th Century, there were the artisans who were involved in building the castle, plus all the additional trades associated with a medieval castle build.

The first stop was the Quarrymen, who took the huge blocks of stone and used various methods to break these down into smaller, workable stones.  It was fascinating to watch them as they felt and observed the rock, gradually making holes with hammer and chisel in order to insert wedges in order to break the rock at its weakest point.  We all cheered as he finally broke the huge sandstone boulder, the mason taking a bow!

But this was just the start of the process as the highly-skilled stone masons then took this rough stone and started to hammer and chisel them into the various stones needed to build walls, arches, windows, doors and so on.  As we watched them, it was clear it took a lot of expertise, skill and time just to create one of many bespoke stone building blocks.

The other thing we very quickly realised was that everything - and I mean everything - had to be made by hand on site for whatever job.  Every tool, prop and machine had to be manufactured on site out of stone, metal or wood.  The skill and effort required was mind-blowing.

We moved on to other areas, including carpenters, who worked with huge oak tree trunks for the main hall, down to small wooden pegs and wooden roof shales.  Nothing was wasted; the bark and shavings were utilised in other areas.  

There were potters creating roof and floor tiles, pots, jugs and bowls in local clay.  Even seeing two men spending hours removing leaves, twigs and stones from the clay to prepare it was a revelation.  We watched ladies weaving baskets and containers from rushes and willow grown on site.  We watched others winding hemp into long ropes.

There were painters and dyers using the natural resources around them - stone, sand, trees and flowers.  In the gardens, plants were grown for food and medicines.

The blacksmiths were hard at work, creating, sharpening and fixing tools, as well as creating all the iron products needed. We watched one blacksmith spend about 15 minutes creating one large iron nail and rivet; there are tens of thousands of these being used.

Finally walking into the castle, it really was like stepping back 800 years.  Everyone who works there is in authentic period costume and they're working away as if we visitors don't exist - it's surreal.  We walked in and around the castle, up spiral staircases, into the various rooms and halls, all decorated by hand with handmade tiles.  

The Privy or long drop!

Bread oven

It was incredible to think that every stone, every piece of roof or wood, every piece of furniture, had been built on site using the raw materials at hand.  It's only then did I realise the effort that went in to building all the castles and medieval houses in the UK; it truly is mind blowing.

We had lunch on site then walked back to the van.  A truly amazing place and if you have the opportunity to visit, do so.

We drove from there to our night stop alongside the canal at Rogny Les Sept Écluses.  We parked up and walked along the canal and over a couple of bridges to take a look at the seven locks.  Now by-passed and therefore dry and redundant, it was still interesting to walk up the length of the old seven locks. After dinner and a busy day, we were in bed early.

It was very foggy this morning when I took Salty out but after showers and breakfast, it cleared into a calm and reasonably sunny day.  After a stop off at Super U for food and diesel, we arrived at this park up by the Loire.  A post-lunch walk took us on a path running alongside the river, before returning for a cup of tea sat in the sunshine, then a tasty chicken roast dinner sat in the van.  It's quiet now and we start to head west tomorrow towards the coast of the Cotentin peninsula of Normandy, an area we know well.