Tuesday 26th June 2018
We realised today that we have been more than a little remiss with the blog the last 10 days or so. This has been because we have either been travelling, heading north, or enjoying some good old fashioned doing nothing whilst taking in the sun.
We needed to make progress north to attend a wedding on the 30th, and we still want to visit Scandinavia this summer.
On Monday the 18th, after an excellent weeks stay at Camping Du Viaduc in Millau, we packed up and headed for Camping Chateau de l’Eperieve at Gigny-sur-Saône, Burgundy.
Kim had noticed this site in the Camping Card book and the description and reviews sounded great so we decided to take a look for ourselves.
Towing Kilometres – Today: 477 Cumulative: 15,273
The fact that the restaurant does a take away beef bourguignon was probably the clincher.
On arrival we were told to find a pitch for ourselves. The pitches are all shapes and sizes, some full service for €3 extra. We chose a long hard standing pitch at the far end of the site as it was less busy there.
The site is excellent, especially the pool, which we made good use of for the three days we stayed. For the first time on our trip we felt that there must be an unwritten rule on this site declaring that no-one should ever make eye contact or exchange friendly greetings. Strange. The beef bourguignon was however, outstanding 🙂
We were heading north again on Thursday the 21st, this time aiming for another site Kim had spotted.
Flower Camping La Samaritaine is located in Bar-lès-Buzancy, a small town in the French Ardennes.
Towing Kilometres – Today: 436 Cumulative: 15,709
We received a warm welcome from reception and given the choice of pitch. The site is fairly remote but peaceful with excellent facilities. Whilst here we caught up on domestic duties and caravan servicing and took in some of the World Cup on TV. A neighbour, Dean from Leicester, joined us for the second half of the England game.
We also rode a pleasant 17km cycle route around the local area.
Monday the 25th dawned dry & warm and we left reasonably early heading north toward Ypres, Belgium. I have visited the town on many occasions and it is one of my favourite places.
Towing Kilometres – Today: 271 Cumulative: 15,980
We decided to avoid tolls because we had paid almost €100 on the trip from Spain so far!
Unfortunately, in avoiding tolls, my SatNav also seemed to want to avoid any road with a white line down the middle or free of potholes 🙁
We were progressing at a crawl at times on tiny D roads and soon the Navigation Induced Quietness set in 🙂
We stopped the car, recalculated a route to the nearest proper road in any direction to start again. Good progress was made after that although some of the surfaces on Belgium motorways were unbelievably bad. I would not want to ride a motorcycle on those roads.
The caravan is now all set up at Camping Jeugdstadion, a stones throw from the centre of town and will remain here until 4th July when we shall head for Scandinavia.
To reward ourselves for saving a few euros on tolls we made our way into town last night and blew another €100 on a meal and much drink. I’m rather glad I worked in engineering and not accounting 🙂
