Thursday 12th July 2018

It is an absolute pleasure driving around this area of France. These roads are so quiet that you feel fairly relaxed about cruising around sightseeing, you do occasionally get an over enthusiastic young driver that will want to pass you at any cost. I do sometimes wonder how these drivers will live to a ripe old age!

Whilst out exploring the area we got a bit peckish and, passing a small bistro in a little village, we decided that it would be a great place for a spot of lunch. We took our seats at a small outside table and began to browse the menu. It slowly dawned on us that this was more than a little restaurant when we saw the Michelin recommendations on the wall and the prices on the menu. We were in two minds as to whether we were going to stay, as we had only really wanted a little snack, but I’m really glad we did.  We had a wonderful meal in lovely surroundings, and chose the menu du jour, which was mussel and courgette soup, pork noisettes in a black curry sauce followed by locally grown apricots, roasted with jus on a biscuit base and homemade ice-cream ! Delicious !

We needed to walk some of those additional calories off, so climbing up the many steps of a perched village was an ideal way to work them off.

Great views…………

And many photo opportunities before heading back for an afternoon doze!

Friday 13th July 2018

This is the view that greeted me on my early morning walk on this Friday, I walked for an hour and a half and during this time I saw only 2 cars. It was great for the soul to walk in all this tranquility.

We had brought our push bikes with us on this trip but so far the terrain had been a little too hilly for us, so it was back to the car for another tour of the locality………

To see places like this,  with the main road in to the town coming through a small archway cut through the rock!

The fields of sunflowers were also in abundance, not as much as the lavender but again a bright primary colour to really knock your socks off!

Saturday 14th July 2018

Driving in France at the weekend has always been our preferred option. Generally the roads are a lot quieter with people not having to go to work and on Sundays most lorries are not allowed to use the roads. So we thought that this Saturday, Bastille day, would be quieter being a national holiday and all that, how wrong we were! We had only a relatively short drive to our next campsite and the most direct route was on the main autoroute the A7/A6 which went through the centre of Lyon. Well let me tell you that with the exception of the first peage, which took us half an hour (thank god we had a fast pass to go through the T barriers otherwise it would have been much longer), we were doing very well time wise and then we hit the outskirts of Lyon. Then all of a sudden the traffic stopped and it took us well over an hour to travel the 3 or so miles along the motorway through the centre of France’s second city.  We will have to put that down to experience!

As the sun sets on on a lovely day for us in the Bourgogne we prepare for the Bastille day celebrations. Jane had seen a poster advertising a lantern parade for that evening, so we arrived at the specified place at the allotted time armed with our lanterns……………….

………..Only to find it was really aimed at the younger element of the campsite………………..

…………Oh well, it seemed like fun and we had never been in France on Bastille day before so we thought we would join in with the celebrations……………………….

……….We paraded around the campsite proudly waving our lanterns to the crowds of watching campers, and as we walked more and more joined us as the parade was going to lead to the culmination of the evening……………….

……………the firework display.  I am always amazed at the size and scale of French fireworks. Our parade had led us to the village football pitch where we met up with the rest of the locals to enjoy a loud and glorious display that lasted for about 20 minutes.

When you are on the road as long as we are, we still have to do all of the normal jobs that you would at home. The housework takes no time at all, but the washing takes the same and we get to try to figure out a new washing machine every few days or so! Jane was very concerned when she took these pants out of the machine fearing she might have shrunk my undies, a quick look at the label showed that they were for age 4/5 and although I am told that I act that age most of the time, they were not mine!