All the weather in one day

The days when we move campsites are always long, and busy. We left Port du Caroline by about 10am and stopped off at the Château du Lude on the way up to Mamers. On the way we had sunshine, torrential rain, hailstones and thunder. Thankfully, by the time we got to the château, the sun was out and it was really warm. We didn't go inside the château itself, just the gardens, which were beautiful, sitting on the banks of the Loire. 

Château du Lude

You know you're old when you think formal gardens are a nice way to spend a morning! But it was lovely. We even found some new puppies in a stable, with their mum. And a very shouty cockerel! 

Mam and her babies 

A Polish chicken, apparently (thank you, Google Lens)

The gardens alongside the Loire

Made a couple of friends - common wall lizards 

The château from the moat

From Le Lude we headed to Mamers, with the thunder rolling in again as we arrived. No one in reception, but a sign saying "pitch up and ring this number". This made me a bit twitchy, as we're just not used to this level of laid back-ness at home. We drove around a couple of times to gauge which pitch would be least likely to turn into a mud bath in the rain. My biggest fear this holiday has been getting stuck on a pitch, again, and I've probably let it worry me more than it should. 

Anyway, we found a pitch and got set up. The sun showed its face again, so we went for a wander into Mamers and found the only bar that was open. On Sundays, France is mostly closed.

La Rotunda, I think it was called 

It was boiling walking back to the campsite but it's quite a pretty area, with hedgerows full of flowers. I even saw some bee orchids, which are quite rare back home (at least, they're rare in Caerphilly). They mimic a female bee, which attracts male bees. The collect pollen on their legs and pollinate the other flowers that they visit.

Bee-autiful bee orchids

We'd just got back to the van when we heard the next thunderstorm coming - it's hard to believe that an hour previously we'd been basking in the sunshine in the village square. 

We were originally going to stay on this site for three nights, but the toilet/shower block is a bit scuzzy (and I've used Eisteddfod toilets so am quite forgiving...), so we're moving on tomorrow. So, tonight, I had my first ever shower in Beti. It was actually really nice - the water gets scalding hot! 

We've had our tea and are just reading (and writing blogs) while the rain continues. 
Tonight's tea - chicken with couscous salad


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

The rain returned this morning, but it did stop long enough for us to have a little pootle around the local area.  From the campsite we went up in one direction, to a small village called Bois-de-Cise. It sits on top of the cliffs of the English Channel and all of the houses are styled very differently. The houses in Bois-de-Cise look like something out of a fairytale   The villas were mostly built during the Belle Epoque (1871 to 1914) Chapelle Sainte-Edith, built in 1912 From there we went back past the campsite and on to the nearby towns of Mers-les-Bains and Le Trèport.  They're your typical seaside towns, although quiet at this time of year. The buildings on the seafront in Mers-les-Bains are also from the Belle Epoque. The seafront buildings of Mers-les-Bains We turned off the main seafront in Le Trèport in the hope of finding a coffee that didn't require a bank loan, and found a really nice café/bar with coffees for 2€. The owner was about our age and had a great 8...
Read more

Ferry across the L' Authion

Image
Another 40km ride today, into Angers and back. Lee's trying to kill me off, I think.  Last year we just cycled along the roads to get to Angers, but this year Lee found a better route that was cycle route almost all the way. Some of it was still on roads, but they were mostly quiet country lanes or proper cycle paths.  Even when you do have to join busier roads, they've almost always got a cycle lane, or separate cycle path next to them. France is totally set up for cycling which, in turn, means that more people cycle.  At one point we had to cross the Authion river, but rather than a bridge there was a DIY ferry (of course there was, this is France)! It's basically a metal floating platform which has a chain running udnderneath it, which is anchored into the river bed. You pull the chain to bring the ferry to your side, put your bikes on, then pull the chain at the other end to pull yourself across the river.  Holding the ferry near the bank, so that Lee could put t...
Read more

Tours be, or not Tours be

So, we got to Tours, after another 4hr drive. We went via Decathlon, for me (Lee reckons I've got radar for Decathlon as I find one wherever I go), and a car garage to pick up some grip mats for the van, in case we get a muddy pitch somewhere down the line. I'm still traumatised by last year's antics in Chartres, when we got stuck on the pitch, so hopefully the mats are more of a precaution.  We arrived at our campsite, Le Mignardières, on the outskirts of Tours, at about 4:45pm. They said they've had a lot of rain in the last couple of weeks, so some pitches were soggy, but they let us have a wander about and choose our pitch before we paid.  We're on a nice corner pitch near the swimming pool, so after we pitched up we went for a swim.  There's a nice little lake nit far from the site, and a restaurant across the road, so we'll probably take a walk around the area tomorrow evening. Tomorrow we're planning a local ride along the Loire cycle route, but f...
Read more