Here it be. If you can’t be bothered to look it up and you know France, it’s partway between Bergerac and Poitiers.
I tend to go there most years for the obvious reasons – the weather, the food, the drink and not forgetting that it’s nice to go and see one’s parents every once in a while.
So come 24th July, that’s where we're heading. Normally, being just the two of us, we’d fly. This time we were taking the car. Up at 4-ish and crack on down to Folkestone to get the Eurotunnel. We were in pretty good time and so stood a really good chance of getting a slightly earlier crossing. Here is where we encountered the first problem.
My TomTom is one of the earlier models. It’s served me well for quite a few years now. The one that I own takes an SD card. If I want to switch between countries, I need to select that on the device itself. Sat in the Eurotunnel car park seemed a good place to do this. And so it was, but the Tomtom didn’t like it. Oh no, it didn’t like the France map at all.
So there we are with about 20 minutes to board the shuttle with no Satnav of France and no road atlas. Great.
I’ve driven down there before.... once. The route takes us through the centre of Paris. Great.
So how was this problem overcome? It just so happened that I’d got a new Blackberry through work a couple of weeks before. This particular model has GPS reception and I had recently downloaded Google Maps onto it. As soon as we got a signal at Calais, I quickly looked up the route. Fortunately, it’s fairly straight forward (despite still going through Paris). One other thing was that I had a charger for the phone, but not a car charger. GPS tends to soak up the battery. Back up plan was to check the route and make a quick note of the directions. That was it, simple as. But it worked. Seven hours or so later we arrived, to a well earned drink and some food.
The rest of the week was fairly straight forward. The intention was to have a totally relaxing time. Wind down from work, soak up some sun, and eat, drink & be merry.
It’s all too easy whilst there to be very lazy and you end up feeling very sedentary and generally out of condition. We decided to try and do something active most morning and then wind down from lunchtime into the evening.
Sunday – walked back from Aigre (the nearest town), about 6.5Km
Monday – a circular walk from Chillé, about 12Km
Tuesday – canoeing on a small river not too far away
Wednesday – a walk to Aigre AND back, 13Km
Thursday – can’t remember!
Friday – lunch out, so we didn’t bother
All good fun. M&D had never been canoeing before and went for a 2-man kayak. Myself & H were on small canoes. These were very little, highly manoeuvrable, BUT not the most stable of craft. H really didn’t get on with hers and spent most of the time trying to aim forwards. To say she didn’t really enjoy would be a bit of an understatement. The French country air has never been so blue!
These photos aren’t in any particular order, they’re just thrown in to break of my ramblings.
A major sad part of this visit is that it was to be our final one. After six years, M&D have decided that they would like to be back in England and are selling up. In actual fact they received an agreeable offer on the Thursday that we were there.
Friday lunch is also worth a mention. One of the best restaurants in the area is called Le Cheval Blanc (The White Horse, for the non-French speakers). It is very popular with Brits and the food there is superb. There are a couple of fixed menus which prove most popular. Our choice is the five course one for €18. Exceptionally good value for what you get, and it includes wine.
The shop above is in Aigre and owned by the same people who own Le Cheval Blanc. It sells some wonderful things. Lots of typical French foodstuffs, as well as kitchen ornaments, and decorations.
So, the end of an era. But such a lovely era. The long-term readers of this blog will know how the house started out and what a wonderful job M&D have done to convert it and make it such a lovely place. The new owners are very lucky.
However, M&D have made many friends in the area and there are ample opportunities to go and stay in the area – not least M’s sister, who only lives a few K’s away.
We had a bit of a wobble with the Satnav on the way there, but it earned it’s keep on the way back! I shall explain...
As per most modern cars, the BM has a readout of miles left in the tank. I tend to let it go down to about 50 before refuelling. We set off back with over 200 in the tank. We cracked on and decided to stop, refuel and grab a sandwich (kindly provided by M).
The service station was completely RAMMED. Queues of about 5-6 cars at each pump. As we got nearer the front we realised we were in a line for diesel only. No choice but to pull over and go round again. I found us a place in the car park and we ate. As the service station was a major one, I suggested that we crack on to the next (hopefully) quieter one.
It was a bit further than we expected but, with 12 miles to go (in the tank), we arrived. It was just as busy as the previous one. We made the same mistake and got in the wrong queue!!! This time we HAD to go round again, so I followed the exit and went to go round... except the exit led straight out onto the motorway, with no way back!!! Not good. Not good at all.
I slowed right down to 50mph, turned off the air con and basically tried to conserve fuel! In the end we decided to pull in next to an emergency telephone. Best try and do something rather than totally run out on the motorway.
One last chance. I looked on the Satnav for the nearest petrol station. After much trawling I found one 11 miles away. 11 miles in the tank. Nothing for it.
Both myself and H were very, very tense for the next ten minutes. We followed the directions and pulled off the motorway. Off down some back roads and entered a town. There it was! I pulled up at the pump and glanced down – 1 mile left in the tank.
I filled up. My tank holds 70 litres. It took 69.65 to fill.
The rest of the journey was, thankfully, uneventful. After all of that gorgeous French food, we had takeaway fish & chips when we got back.
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