Chateau Chenonceau

Chenonceau is famous for it amazing chateau, one of the grandest in France. The campsite is about 15 minutes from the chateau so we decided to walk there in the blistering heat.

The gardens and the buildings are spectacular and the rooms are well kept with tapestries, paintings and renaissance furnishings. There are so many bedrooms I started to get bored of them. Don't get me wrong, they are all decorated differently, it's just there were a lot of them.

Later in the afternoon I cycled to the local wine cave which is basically a building where the local wine is sold by the bottle or by the litre. I sampled their white, rose and two reds. The white was very nice. I cycled back with a few bottles in the rucksack.

As we settled down to have another BBQ a flock of air balloons sailed over. A very pretty sight without a cloud in the sky. The campsite is busy and everyone seems friendly with the weather being very warm and the insect are very hungry. I've got 15 bites on my legs and Zoe's ankle is swollen with them.

Back to Loire Valley

After we said goodbye to Ken and his party of Yorkshire men we headed back north to the Loire Valley. We arrived at a lovely campsite in Chenonceaux near Amboise with a pitch right next to the River Cher. The weather was hot and sunny with no clouds.

Domme

We planned to do very little today. The weather is getting hotter and we are getting lazy. Today is our last day in the Dordogne and I don't really want to go. It's a very pretty location, the people are very nice and the campsite is great. It's lunchtime when we decided to go out and we headed to an ancient walled town called Domme which is up on the tallest location just a stones throw from the campsite.

The view from Domme is spectacular and it looks over the whole valley. We could see La Roche Gageac, the restaurant we ate at last night, where we cycled, the campsite and the river as it twists and turns in and out of view.

One week to go and we run out of bog paper

Later on we do some grocery shopping at a local supermarket which is really good fun as we try to work out what the products are, attempt a little French lingo (Execuse moi s'il vous plaît. Avez-vous un lait frais?) and got to try what the French eat.

Apparently, Ken and Philip are members of a group of Yorkshire men free-masons who are meeting up at our campsite. That evening we were invited round to have a drink and some nibbles. It was good fun and everyone was very friendly.

Rocs and Holes

Wow, it's getting hot here.

The river is still high and so we head to Rocamadour which is a town built into the side of a tall rocky hill. It has a few churches, a chateau and many shops and restaurants. We had a wonderful cassoulet maison (direct translation; home made casserole with three types of sausage and a duck drumstick) in one of the restaurants over looking the valley.

Ad with his cassoulet and new t-shirt from Super-U

After a stroll and soaking in the sights we headed to Gouffre de Padirac (Chasm of Padirac) which happens to be a massive hole in the ground followed by an underground river and many wonderful, large stalactites and stalagmites that looked like stacks of plates.

The driving today was away from all the fast motorways that we've done so far. Instead, it was twisty country lanes and up and down the valleys. However, on the way back the sat-nav decided to take us on a "fast", as-the-crow-flies, direct route down narrow slow roads which added an extra 45 minutes to our journey.

Being tired and a little fed up we decided to eat in a local restaurant and postponed our BBQ for another day.

La Roche Gageac

This morning we woke up feeling the effects of the alcohol and I could still taste the Leffe.

After yesterday we had to get out and start enjoying the holiday again. So instead of driving, we went for a bicycle ride and ended up in La Roche Gageac which is a beautiful village on the Dordogne river where some of the houses are built into the rock that is looming above.

We wanted to take a boat trip to see the sights along the river but the water level was too high for safe passage. It must have been due to all the rain they've recently had. We stopped off at a patisserie for lunch. For some reason we didn't take our cameras but later on that afternoon we went back in Herman and took some good shots.

Sick Herman

Well, the blown side light was not blown at all. Half the driving lights were out and the fuse kept blowing. I called the breakdown service (getting my moneys worth) and we had to take Herman to a garage who managed to bypass the short circuit. We'll have to get that sorted properly when we are back in the UK. Sorting that out took most of the day and we didn't do anything. The rain had stopped and the sun shone down on us a few times but we basically lost a day's holiday. I think we still have a mouse on board and it's chewed through some wiring. It's a good job we took out the breakdown cover. Although, I still had to pay the garage €87. I can claim for it back but that's not the point.

In the evening we sat down in the campsite bar with Ken and Phil (father and son). They are nice chaps and helped us out with a few things while I was attending Herman's short. Ken has lots of stories, about camping and when he was a boy in the war. He's getting on a bit too. After a few pints of Leffe beer and a very large Bowlands whiskey it was around 1am. It was a good night and David the campsite owner joined us too. He's very funny. He kept getting told off by his wife for being too loud.

To Dordogne

Today we headed to the Dordogne region. It was a long drive (about 5.5 hours) and it rained all day.

When we arrived at the campsite we had to pitch on a short side road between the pitches otherwise we would have got stuck on the sodden grass.

While looking for a pitch I noticed that one of Hermans side lights had blown. That's something I'll have to do in the morning.

Le Perpetulum campsite is situated right on the Dordogne river which is currently fast flowing. We've been on holiday for a we
ek now and it was a good opportunity to do some clothes washing.