We appear to have lucked out; having arrived on Friday afternoon at Le Puy-en-Velay, we discovered that Saturday is market day. We set off this morning on foot for our first investigation. Our walk was a little further than we anticipated. We were a somewhat further out of town than we thought and the footpath took a rather circuitous route along the banks of a couple of the local rivers, La Loire and La Borne. Nonetheless it was pleasant enough four mile walk and eventually some of Le Puy’s more famous landmarks (more of these tomorrow) began looming large as we neared our objective.

Faced with a sizeable town and wanting to find the market, our technique is to spot pedestrians carrying shopping bags loaded with goodies and walk in the direction from which they came. Soon we were close enough to pick up some audio clues – not only was there a market but there was a parade on, too, which seemed to be of producteurs from various parts of the country all dressed in colourful regalia. Since the parade pretty much filled the limited street space within the market, it made market shopping quite difficult but it was most entertaining to see. I’m not certain if it helped the tradesman’s business, though.

We limited our purchases to a baguette and a poulet rôti (rotisseried chicken – most French markets have excellent rotisseries) which got popped into a greaseproof bag with some tasty juices and hit the four mile return path for one of the messiest but most enjoyable lunches. This is one of our favourites; there’s something inherently enjoyable about tearing roasted meat apart with your hands and slapping it in some good bread.

We’re here tomorrow to see the town minus the market but moving off on Monday so we needed more supplies. Since there is a McDonalds next to one of the supermarkets, we braved the Le Puy traffic jams and went to the other side of town in search of McWiFi as well. Rush hour was well under way as we returned, though it was still less severe than at home.

Evening proved to be a little too windy for comfortable dining en plein air so we reluctantly dined inside Billy (salade Niçoise) for the first time this trip.

Time to pack up and head off to pastures new. We had decided to head for Le Puy-en-Velay in the Massif Central.

When we are touring in France we use combination of Michelin maps, one of which is a large “big picture” route planner at 1cm = 10kms. A couple of years ago we discovered that a ball point pen that we possessed was handy in judging distances and driving times between points. One pen length was worth a hundred on our big picture map. “A hundred what?”, I hear you ask. “Precisely!”, I reply.

In selecting Le Puy-en-Velay as our next destination, my astronavigatrix had been pacing pen lengths out on our map and decided that Le Puy was 2½ pens away. “That’s about 250 kms”, said she, “about 160 miles”. Off we set. Since it wasn’t too far, we elected to take the scenic route initially and avoid the autoroute until we needed to negotiate Clermont Ferrand (or Clement Freud, as it has become affectionately known). After we were about half way there, I already had 120 miles on the trip odometer. Whoops! Astronavigatrix now remembered that the magic pen was worth 100 miles, not 100 kms. The magic pen is actually 14cms long, add 2cms to allow for road bends, twists and turns, and you arrive at 16cms=160kms=100miles. It is remarkably accurate provided that one remembers what it is worth 100 of.

No problem, we had plenty of time and driving in France is utter bliss compared to the bedlam of the UK. We eventually arrived after 270 miles and 7 hours driving. We rejected our first attempt at a camp site as being too dull and too far out of town but settled in happily to our second choice.

It is worth noting that, having driven 270 miles diagonally across France, we are still on the banks of the same river, La Loire.

The sun was back today, more so than we’d expected from the forecast, so we set out to ride one of this region’s excellent cycle routes that was new to us. We’d head across La Loire and into Blois. Since that would take us close to a local McDonalds (at Vineuil), although it would mean an unwelcome additional load of the laptop strapped to my back, it would provide an opportunity to start the blog postings using McDonald’s excellent free McWiFi service. We loaded up and set off.

We hit McDonalds around lunchtime. It was busy, absolutely McHeaving with swarms of McRugrats. Still, needs must so we invested a couple of Euros in a matched pair of McEspressos and got our brief Internet fix. (Why doesn’t McDonalds do espressos in England? I thought they were big on universal menus. Curious.)

“I survived McRugrats” medals firmly in place, we escaped back to the relative clam and sanity of the piste cyclable and headed into Blois, pausing for our own lunch on the south bank of La Loire. (Be honest, you didn’t really think I was going to eat a McPants burger now, did you?)

Big towns are much more readily visited and explored by bicycle than by car and we soon negotiated the Blois traffic system and found the chateau. We were intrigued to notice an odd recurring emblem on and around the chateau: a porcupine carrying a crown on its spines. Porcupines not being at all common in France, I was curious as to the reason for the symbol. Our Rough Guide helped little but does say the porcupine is associated with Louis XII’s wing. There is apparently also a salamander associated with that of François I. Not sure how many salamanders there are in France, either.

We continued back heading east along the north bank of La Loire, crossed back south over a bridge at Muides-sur-Loire and returned to our camp site feeling very self-righteous having taken the laptop for a 34 mile ride. Someone’s legs are going to ache a little in the morning.

Oddly, three bottles of Heineken didn’t last very long at all.

If there’s one slight drawback to this excellent camp site in Huisseau-sur-Cosson, it’s that charcoal barbecues are not allowed. That’s a common restriction in the south of France where there is a significant fire risk but it’s unusual this far north on La Loire.

We had rain this morning so spent the time on necessities like food shopping and buying an Aujour d’hui newspaper with weather maps. It looks as though things should brighten up here for the coming few days. It also seems that Usain Bolt has been entertaining people in night clubs as well as on the track. I guess Aujour d’hui is principally a gossip paper. Our principal interest is its four days of weather maps; very handy for sun-seeking travellers.

The rain ceased and George, our lean, mean, fat-reducing grilling machine and general barbecue substitute, was pressed into service preparing grilled asparagus with goats cheese for lunch. As the afternoon continued to brighten, we took to the bikes for some exercise and a visit to chateau Chambord. It isn’t very picturesque at the moment, though, ‘cos there’s a bunch of scaffolding around a few of its many towers. I did cycle by a pair of very picturesque cycling female gendarmes on the approach but Carol had the camera and besides, I didn’t want to get arrested. 🙂 I’ve cycled carrying a few things but never a gun.

We continued on one of the many local cycle routes and had covered 23 miles as we returned to our pitch. George sprung into action yet again to reward us with a splendid grilled magret de canard (duck breast) accompanied by lentils and wilted spinach.

That really must be my five-a-day today.

Cue for a song:

What a difference a day makes,
Twenty four little hours …

Where had all the sun gone? We collected our pain chocolat for our first indulgent French breakfast and headed south under grey skies with intermittent showers. We were treading a well trodden cross-country route (i.e. mostly off autoroutes) to a well-used camp site we know in Huisseau-sur-Cosson, just south of Blois on La Loire river.

We arrived after 4½ hours on real French roads. The owner recognized us from previous years, though he speaks very quietly and can be difficult to understand with our limited grasp of French, and we found a great secluded pitch for Billy. Starting somewhere familiar helps to get us into the swing of French life before striking out somewhere new.

This is one of those areas of France where we feel we could live. It’s real France and it’s chateau country, always interesting. There’s also been a lot of development of brilliantly linked cycle tracks in the area (see http://www.loire-a-velo.fr), some running through the beautiful ancient forests (hunting grounds) of the landed gentry, and is a great place to reduce reliance upon the car. We are within cycling distance of chateaux such as Chambord and Cheverney.

We’ll be buying copies of Aujour d’hui for weather maps and seeing how meteorological things develop while we have some exercise and a break from travelling.

The sun greeted our morning departure for Dover and the 1:00 PM P&O ferry to Calais. We spent a casual hour or so loading the inevitable last-minute items, like food in the fridge and camera bags in the car, then hitched up and set off at about 8:40 AM. We’d hardly had this much sun in England since Wimbledon fortnight and we were leaving it.

Approaching the QEII bridge over the Thames estuary we were greeted by a changed toll structure. We were used to cars being charged £1 which was doubled for us when towing a caravan. On the approach roads we saw that cars had suffered 50% inflation and were now £1.50. With £3 at the ready I was pleasantly surprised when the lady in the toll booth told us it was £1.50 for us, too. Maybe she hadn’t spotted big Billy Bailey stuck on the back of our car? Not! If we have any money left on the return trip, we’ll try the toll crossing again to check. 🙂

It’s about a three hour trip dragging a caravan to Dover, especially into a headwind but, when we checked in, the nice man offered us a place on the 12:15 PM sailing so we were very soon embarking and off to France a little earlier than planned. Losing an hour to French time, the 90-minute crossing was very smooth and we disembarked under continuing clear blue skies at about 2:45 PM local time. Now it really was time to decide which way to head.

We stuck with plan A, turned west and headed for Neufchâtel-en-Bray in Normandy. We’d like to get to the far south-east of France but that’s mountainous and requires fair weather. From Normandy we can push south down the centre and turn whichever way the weather may dictate.

Not only had the clear blue skies followed us but so too had the headwind. Nonetheless we had a blissfully uneventful two hour journey into Normandy and booked in to our night halt at about 5:00 PM. Some charcoal grilled rump steak washed down by a bottle of Shiraz in the evening sun rounded off the day nicely.

We’re here!