Getting old and damp

Today Andy is officially old, so after years of practising he's now allowed at 40 to be the grumpy old man he's been training for over all these years :o)

We left the lovely village of Montreuil-Bellay on Thursday after having a cracking one-pan cooked fish dish Chris pulled together on the Wednesday night (and yes, again we had a bottle of a local wine which was, as expected, superb) on course for Chris's birthday present to Andy which is a two night stay at a marvellous chataeu in Noizay. And what a place it is too. So we pull up outside and park the Bongo, right next to one of those new four seater Aston Martins. Excellent. A man appeared (probably trying to work out if we should actually be there) and welcomed us to the hotel. So we settled and we have like a big bed and space, two concepts that we've not been used to over the last couple of weeks or so. A wee wander about, followed by a bath (another luxury) and then down to dinner. In case you didn't know the French can cook. Very well. Very, very well in fact. The chateau also of course has got good local vintage wines so that helped too! A wee gin and tonic to see us past midnight and into Andy's birthday and a great day was complete.

This morning we woke up and had an energy providing omlette each for breakfast (yes, Chris had one too!) and Andy couldn't think of anything better to do on his birthday than go for a run. Chris retrieved her bike from the back of the Bongo (again, next to the Aston!) and we set off on a rycle. The heavens then opened, ensuring that some downhills and flat were as wet as could be, with the sun coming out to provide imposing heat once we were climbing on the way back just to rub it in. We managed a ittle over ten miles at fast (for Andy) marathon race pace. Once back Chris put a few more miles in on the bike before joining Andy down by the pool. Tough way to spend your 40th, isn't it?

Next we are going for a wee walk to get a bite to eat for lunch, then an easy afternoon before another great meal in prospect. We think we'll probably try their tasting menu, though whatever we choose I'm sure it will be excellent again. Tomorrow we will leave here and pack ourselves back into the van which may come as a bit of a culture shock! We've not booked any campsites but we have a couple in mind, not too far from Blois.

25th August

No, our laptop hasn't died (touch wood), we've just not been blogging! We have been round the chateau, which was very impressive. After another failed attempt at getting into the restaurant serving Moules Frites on Sunday night we finally managed it, third time lucky, on Monday evening (after a couple of free glasses of locally made sparkling wine at the wine tasting - yes, we did say free, happy days!) and they were absolutely fantastic. The first ones in Honfleur were very nice, but not a patch in comparison to these.

On Tuesday we saddled up and went on our bikes to Saumur. We were merrily following a walkway, but it ended at one point and we did our regular thing and got lost. However, we found our way again and made it to the town. We went up to the chateau first at the top of the hill and had lunch sitting on the grass admiring the view. We then went into the town centre for a pleasant bit of wandering around, before cycling back. Approximately 28 miles of cycling - not too bad. We made dinner in the van again, washed down with another nice bottle of Saumur wine (for info, all the wines from this region have been lovely!).

Today was supposed to be very hot, but hasn't turned out that way. We live in hope, but in the meantime, Andy is off for a run that will be a lot cooler than the last few.

Thunder and Lightning!

A beautifully clear day started off as a very clear, although hardly quiet, night. There was a wedding reception in the bar, and they can show the Scots a thing or two about how to celebrate a wedding, judging from the noise, and the hour it went on to (well past 2am). Funnily, sometime after midnight the traditional dancing must have been going on as, as when we both went to the loo, we could hear accordions, and the muted sounds sounded so like a ceilidh. Whilst we couldn't hear the party from our van, we could, however, hear a bunch of folk who had been on the other side of the river going for a noisy swim, with the blokes coming over here. Ah the joys of the young (says old-age Andy, hee hee - C.).

Then, sometime in the middle of the night, we were woken by some very impressive thunder. Chris got out of the van to move the washing line a bit more under the shelter, and that's when we could also see the lightning. It was pretty impressive. It must have rained, but the trees we are under are better at shelter than we'd realised as we didn't hear it if it did.

Morning came with overcast skies tho still warm - actually very pleasant weather. A check of the weather forecasts had pessimistic BBC saying rain, and more optimistic Wunderland saying patchy sun with 20% chance of rain. So after Andy collected our bakery order, we just took our time, then went out on the bikes to see if a local supermarket was open (it wasn't, ho hum). On the way back, a detour to the restaurant with moules hoping to book (still no luck) took us past one shop which was open, so by the time we'd done all of that, it was late morning, and guess what, the sun was out. By the time we got ourselves together and left (Chris taking one route and Andy taking another), it was late morning and getting hot.

Andy's run was slow. Like real slow. He took in a nice wee village and caught a glimpse of another chateau but couldn't work out how to get there, so an out and back of just over nine miles, running past vineyard after vineyard just had to do. But it was like hot. Well hot. Like totally dripping with sweat and melting hot. So nine miles would do nicely. Once he was back and an industrial amount of water taken onboard Chris turned up from her cycle.

Chris' cycle had taken small roads toward Saumur. She didn't quite get there as we'd agreed a time to meet back at the van and she wouldn't have had time, but wasn't far off. There were some pretty, and some not so pretty, villages along the way, and LOTS of sunflower fields. And it was hot. The plus side of being on a bike tho' is going faster and generating a breeze! However, being out for another two hours has left her feeling a little saddle-sore :o( However, her journey has given us a cycle plan for the next day or two.

Another lovely Chris-in-the-Bongo cooked meal with some excellent local Saumur wine (thanks to the open supermarket we found in the morning) and all is, again, well with the world. Off to the bar to make sure the local brew is okay too.

Sunday 12st August - Very hot!

So we woke up to another beautiful day - not a hint of mist this time, and hot from the word go. Just as well there were not rycles planned for today! We set off for McDonalds and, as you can probably tell, connected to their wifi and updated our blog, amongst other things. Despite being there near lunchtime, we just had coffees and Andy managed to avoid the temptation of Le Big Mac.

On the downside, it seems that we don't get much more than two days of not travelling, and therefore not charging the battery, for the fridge to keep working. It won't have been helped by the hot weather no doubt, but it gave up during the night. Due to our variety of cables for electric hook-ups with both 2- and 3-pin connectors, Andy had come up with the idea of buying (yes, here we go again!) a small battery charger that we could connect to the electic hook-up in a campsite to charge the leisure battery for the fridge with. So we then went in search of a big enough supermarket that would stock it, eventually found one, and found a suitable battery charger. We then set off for our next campsite, but took a scenic route (deliberately!) to get more battery charging time.

On our way, we passed a wedding cavalcade. All the guests travel behind the wedding car with a flower attached to the aerial and hazard lights flashing - a really nice touch.

We got to the campsite, only to find that someone was already in the pitch earmarked for us. Chris trooped back to reception and was told to just pick another one and let them know which one (they're not packed here at the moment....) So we got a better pitch right next to a hook up with a view to the river - lovely. The battery charger works like a charm, the fridge is fridging, and having no direct neighbours we have a whole load of hook-ups to ourselves, so have one doing the battery charging and one leading to the van for the plug - perfect!

We then went on our first sojourn on the bicycles together in the VERY hot weather. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a cycle path up to the Loire itself from here (one is planned - great...), and we quickly decided the main road wouldn't be a pleasant ride. So we toured around small roads in the area, then came back to the town. The town is absolutely lovely - the chateau looks wonderful (and will be explored soon), and it seems to have the only hill in the area (which is good and bad!). After we'd almost finished the ride, we wanted to go back past a restaurant we had noticed earlier advertising moules frites (a pattern emerging, perhaps), which was, of course, up a very steep hill. So the decision was made to finally eat out for dinner. However, by the time we got back, showered, had a beer, it was pretty late. Not to worry, you would think, the continental Europeans eat late. Not so in Montreuil-Bellay it would seem. We walked back up to the restaurant to find it was full and no more food orders were being taken - queue one crestfallen Andy. So back to the van and a veggie-mexican concoction by Chris - Andy then perked up again, especially with another beer or two to wash it down. So the first bike trip was a success.

One other thing, apart from the fridge, which decided to throw a strop today was our laptop. Something dodgy seems to have happened in McDonalds this morning (not for the first time) and it wouldn't boot. It would get part way then shut down. Having finally found a way to boot in safe mode, even that wouldn't work. Dire signs. We won't bore the non-techies out there with the details, but Chris eventually found a way to turn off the auto-shut down, booted for the nth time, expecting a blue screen but at least a sign of the problem, when it decided to boot. We are now scared of shutting down..... So a note for future - if our blogs stop without any warning, it is probably due to a dead laptop!


Tomorrow, more touring of the area, a maybe our first trip around a chateau, if it's open on Sundays. Oh, and perhaps partaking in the wine tasting that is laid on here on a Sunday evening.....

Friday 20th August - HOT!!

So this morning we woke up a wee bit before 8am to a beautiful morning - clear blue sky, sun rising, but with low level mist which looked absolutely lovely. Having learnt the lesson of yesterday, we were dressed with the bed away and coffees being drunk by the time the bakery stuff arrived. It was just as well, as by the time we left at around 10 it was already very hot. Andy's aim was to get some speed in his run today, so we decided to stick to the same path as yesterday as at least we knew there would be some shade there.

After 3 miles Andy decided to turn round, but Chris carried out for about another mile getting some speed herself on the bike (which also meant some cooling wind - lovely!). Andy was obviously tanking it on the way back as it took Chris a lot longer to catch him than expected - very impressive in the heat. Once we were back and showered, we decided to take some well deserved time by the pool. However, there wasn't really any room for swimming due to quite a lot of kids, so once hunger and the noise got the better of us, we gave in and returned to the van for lunch.
We have been rueing (sp?) not bringing Andy's bike. It was a deliberate choice as he never uses it at home as he will always run rather than cycle so we thought our rycles were the way to go, with some running and cycling separately to suss out an area before doing some sightseeing later depending on what we found. However, we have realised that the best way to see the areas we visit is by bike as we can cover a lot more area that way. Andy isn't convinced he is quite up to 40 miles + each day yet (he is still a bit away from the Richie Cunningham 200+ mile weeks) and Chris isn't willing to give him a backie when he gets tired, so we were left a little stuck as to ways to do good tours together. A couple in the next pitch to us at the moment suggested buying a bike as there is a big sports store not far from here selling (relatively) fairly cheap bikes. We came to the conclusion that, particularly if we sell it again when we get home, it would actually be cheaper than hiring one every now and then. So in the afternoon we bought Andy a bike, possibly a ladies bike but hey, it was the less expensive (not quite such a cheap trip at the moment, but it'll all work out!). So David, if you're reading this, we hope you are getting good use out of the bike and if you haven't yet, GET ON IT NOW!! ;o)

Once back at the campsite we set about changing the brake cable on Chris' bike (seemingly successfully so far - the next ride will tell us for sure! - if you see any stories about braking-mishap-injuries, you will know otherwise) whilst both getting covered in bike grease which meant, as Chris commented, Andy could pretend he'd been doing "man stuff" - always important (it's not proper man stuff until something gets broken, so he may/may not have done that -Ed).

Tomorrow we leave here, which is a bit of a shame, but we needed to book the next stop before we got here due to lack of wifi here. We are heading a little bit further north towards the Loire itself and near to Saumur. We will also be dropping by Mcdonalds. Yes really. They've got free wifi so we may have to buy a coffee to catch up with stuff. Or a McFlurry. Must try to avoid Le Big Mac though...

Thursday 19th August (still no wifi, so a little delayed)

So we awoke this morning to clear skies at 7:30 though a little chilly. By 9am cloud cover was total but it was a decent temperature. Also at nine o'clock the baguette and pain au chocolat and pain au raisin that we ordered the night before were brought to our campervan! How cool is that? Our coffees were already made by this point and life was indeed good. The plan was to get out for our rycle early on before the cloud burned off; a cunning plan indeed. We also moved plots down one after the family next to us left as it is a little flatter and gets more sun and more shade. Somehow by the time we did this and got ourselves ready it had past 11, life in the slow lane indeed.

We followed the intructions given to find the cycle path and it was great (if a little flat for our usual jaunts). We went out for ten miles (see pic for Andy's disappearing back), with Chris occasionally pedalling on ahead then coming back to collect Andy, then turned back by which time the skies were a lovely blue and the temperature had shot up. Andy struggled a bit with the heat as on the slight inclines that we had (that seemed to go on for ever, how come we didn't notice them so much on the way out?) there was hardly any shade, typical! We managed to get the twenty miles in under three hours which given the heat was quite acceptable, though lesson learned to go out earlier!

Once back at the site Chris set off on her bike to get supplies from the Carrefour (which she was glad to find was uphill from the campsite, so the ride back with a very full rucksack was very easy); we were short of fresh veg, wanted some meat and concerningly were running out of wine. The wine situation is now sorted (a bottle of wine in the rucksack did make it kinda heavy).. Oh, we also have food too (although still short of fresh veg - hmm. Another cycle for Chris tomorrow). Andy managed to wait for the pool to clear and got a nice wee swim in and some decent lying about in the sun was achieved.

Having just polished off a great spicy turkey concoction pulled togerther by Chris we are now sitting in the sun making our best efforts to re-introduce our wine shortage. Had we mentioned that life is good :o)

Wednesday 18th August (no wifi, so a bit delayed)

We woke up to a pretty nice day in Normandy, with patches of blue sky and a comfortable temperature. With any luck for those staying on (in particular a very nice English couple whose kids were getting a tad bored in the rain) it'll be a nice day and stay that way for at least 2 days! After a diversion to buy another adapter for our long French power cable, we set off in the direction of the Loire valley. No sat nav mishaps this time, just one minor panic at the end of a toll road when it looked like our only options were those for vehicles with transponders as the one for cards had a height restriction (luckily it turned out all methods were ok at all the stations) and we found the campsite fairly easily. It's a very nice site, although the shower isn't the best, but this is made up for by our nice pitch, toilets with seats (a rarity), the bread and croissant orders being delivered to our door each morning and, yes, THE SUN!!!! It's hot,sunny and we are happy! The site is run by an English couple (he's called Robert Smith and looks (at least to Chris) a bit like Jasper Carrot - one unfortunate bit of genetics and one of parents-name-choosing!), and when we arrived there wasn't a single vehicle that wasn't British which was amusing, if a little bizarre. Since then 2 French vehicles have turned up, and they must find it very odd.

A 20 or so minute walk took us into the nearby town centre where we had a couple of very wee beers (honestly!) then wandered back again. Apparently there is free wifi in MacDonalds but we didn't manage to find that - will get directions again tomorrow. Andy managed to find some nice chorizo to cook with, which he threw together with a few fesh veg into a lovely dinner.

There is a cycle path nearby which should be long enough even for Andy, although if the weather keeps up like this (which we sincerely hope it does!), we will have to go out first thing or it will be far too hot. Stories of sweaty outings to follow!