Weather is perverse. After yesterday’s completely solid and very low cloud thrashing rain at us all day long, there were stars in the hitherto largely unseen sky for some of the night, at least. This morning, there were very brief interludes of blue with the occasional burst of strange brilliance, but we were back to about nine tenths cloud moving briskly by in a moderate breeze. If there’s a storm system moving through, as there undoubtedly is, where on Earth does it go overnight?

Spirits already lifted by the lack of thrashing rain, we were sitting having coffee #1 when our spirits got another lift as the now unmistakable (to us) flutey whistle of a golden oriole came drifting in on the breeze. These are summer migrants, mostly heard rather than seen, in Europe from May to August only (sensible birds), and are one of the reasons we enjoy France so much in June.

The day continued to improve, even the poppies in the cornfield outside Billy’s pitch had perked up, so we decided to skip breakfast and get out on the bikes while we could. Before leaving home, Carol had discovered a McDonalds in Vineuil, about 6 miles from us, which supposedly had a wi-fi hook-up. Having several days worth of postings, dear reader, off we went with the lap top. Following one of the excellent cycle routes here, we son navigated our way through Vineuil and found the McDonalds complete with wi-fi sign – closed for refurbishment until 6th June. Maybe they’d left their wi-fi turned on? No such luck. Bother! Unbelievable – the one time we’d had the foresight to check and it was out of commission.

Beginning our homeward journey for lunch, we stumbled across a B+B Hotel (more of a motel) advertising free wi-fi. So, we snuck along the fence line and lo, a weak signal. It needed an authorised sign-on, though. Carol filled in an e-form but no joy. Start home again. Back in the centre of Vineuil, Carol heard her mobile phone chirp. We stopped, she examined the phone and lo, an SMS message containing a password for the B+B hotel wi-fi. Strewth! So, having come this far, we turned around and returned, uphill, I hasten to add, to the fence outside the B+B. Finding the weak signal again, we managed (I think) to post our first blog entry (Amateur Hour), then go for the second and lost the signal. Drat! Repeated attempts to re-establish connection failed so we gave up and returned home. Could they have powered the connection down for lunch? It was 1:00 PM. Oh well, a 17 mile round trip to make a single blog posting. No matter, it was a pleasant ride.

The day had continued to improve and we had a very pleasant lunch of grilled butternut squash, serrano ham, lettuce and shaved ossau irraty cheese. That needed another bike ride to negate the calories so, in the late afternoon, we popped up the road to visit chateau de Chambord before returning for a couple of pastis and dinner.

An unexpectedly terrific day, even if the Internet stuff was a tad more than frustrating.

The rain started gently soon after we awoke. It was expected and, as the shops were now all open following the holiday Monday, we decided to take the car to the Intermarché at Mont-prés-Chambord to fill up with food and diesel.

The rain had increased a little in force as we left and all around looked a very even grey. Until the afternoon, the rain would stop for about 3 minutes, then return slightly heaver. That, at least, allowed for brief sorties outside. By late afternoon there were no gaps, the rain wash thrashing constantly and waterfalls were streaming down Billy’s windows. By early evening the lightening and, I assume, thunder had joined the now ever more forcefull rain. I say "assume" thunder because the rain beating on the roof like the hammers of hell was so deafening that we really couldn’t hear anything else.

We had the foresight to buy some comfort food, choucroute garni Alsacienne (sauerkraut, smoked sausages, smoked ham and potatoes), which we have recently finished. It’s 9:30 PM now and I can hear a blackbird singing so the rain must have eased. The crickets have joined in and are singing, too. The sky still looks blacker than the ace of spades, though, so I suspect this little orage (storm) has not finished with us yet.

The forecast does not look good for the rest of the week, either.

The forecast for Monday and Tuesday wasn’t great – thunder storms floating around – so it was a pleasant surprise to be greeted by some clouds scudding in a moderate breeze accompanied by some sunshine.

We are about 3 miles from Mont-prés-Chambord which has at least one of the finest boulangeries in France (personal opinion). They have bread to die for and some terrific pain au raisin that go down particularly well for breakfast. Off the car with the bikes and off, once more against that old head wind, into Mont-prés-Chambord to see what we could get. Unfortunately, this was a Bank Holiday Monday and "one of the finest boulangeries in France" was closed. Darn! Never mind, a little further down the main street there’s another perfectly acceptable boulanger which was open. (Towns with multiple choices tend to alternate cover for the holidays. The French do not do well deprived of bread.) Carol went in while I stayed avec les velos, and eventually emerged with a fine baguette and a couple of more-calories-than-it’s-wise-to-count almond croissants.

Returning via a different route, this time with wind assistance, we clocked up our first 7.5 miles and settled down to a late breakfast of coffee and almond croissants. At least the cycling would offset a small portion of the 3,296 calories in each cardiac arrest package.

After a bit of putzing, we changed to go for some more serious cycling in a desperate attempt to reduce our calorie footprint. Swap sun and scudding clouds for very British drippy, nuisance rain. Oh well, at least it started before we left.

Settling down for lunch, we discovered the beginnings of a structural failure in Billy. One of two tiny cast-metal brackets securing our front drawer unit and occasional table to the front bulkhead had fractured. Enter stage right caravan repair man. Some grovelling about on hands and knees armed with a torch produced a diagnosis: the bottom of the drawer unit was clearly supposed to be resting on a couple of battens but was actually hovering about 0.5cm above them. The weight, therefore, was hanging on nothing more than the two (now one) insubstantial, cast-metal angle brackets. How Bailey managed to assemble it this way I simply cannot imagine. A levitation device, perhaps? Potential solution: remove it completely, let gravity take its course, and drop it the 0.5cm so that its weight is taken on the aforementioned battens, then refit the remaining intact bracket, with some suitable packing. It should be man enough simply to stabilize it as opposed to supporting it. I’ve tried Araldite on the broken bracket but haven’t tried it yet. It may be time to hit Monsieur Bricolage to search for a substitute.

At least it gives something to do while the weather is being irritating. Why can’t we build things correctly, though?

The rain was still with us when we awoke at the Aire des Deux Caps. It eased off and eventually stopped shortly afterwards, though.

One of the reasons we like using this service area, apart from its proximity to the ferry port, is that it has decent washing facilities and a reasonable cafe for that first French breakfast of coffee and pain au chocolat. Now we know we’re in France.

Suitably refreshed and awakened, it was time to figure out what to do. If the ports are being blockaded there could be fuel shortages developing. We could stay in Normandy within one tank’s worth of the channel ports until we know what’s going to develop. Why though? Do we want to spend a long time in Normandy? Pleasant though it is, no. Anyway, there will be countless other folks dans le même bateau, will there not? We’re here for 6 weeks, for Christ’s sake; the French government surely couldn’t let fuel problems persist that long. Utter anarchy would result. (Come to think of it, that sounds very French.) On with plan A and see what happens.

Driving in France is a dream because the roads are better (smoother) than our pot-holed excuses for roads, and a lot less crowded. Driving in France on Sunday is even better because the roads are even quieter since most of the truck drivers don’t work on Sunday. Pulling a caravan through France on Sunday sucks because almost every fuel station other than those on the autoroutes is shut. (To be fair, there are lots of 24 hour automated pumps but do they take British credit cards? Absolutely not!)

We had an irritating head wind which negated a lot of any potential benefit from down hill sections and the Calais – Rouen autoroute is very hilly so we were sucking down very expensive diesel at an alarming rate. We’d never make the 300 miles on a tank like this. We filled up at the last autoroute service station before Rouen, though, and that gave us the range to get to Huisseau-sur-Cosson, just south of Blois on La Loire, passing all those closed fuel stations.

Today was exceptionally quiet. This was quietness redefined. Having left Rouen, we headed directly south to Blois and almost had the road to ourselves. Occasionally a vehicle would pass us going north or overtake us going south but, for the most part, we were alone – literally not a car in sight. This never, but never, happens in England, not even at 2:00 AM. It was so quiet, it was eerie. Had everyone else been incinerated in a nuclear holocaust? Someone had suggested the locals are just not driving much because of the fuel prices. Maybe it’s true.

After a blissful drive, albeit struggling against an adverse wind, and a brief pause for a bite of lunch, we pulled into our camp site at Huisseau-sur-Cosson at about 3:00 PM – five minutes before a Dutch caravan. This is unusual. Our fortuitous timing enabled us to snaffle the currently unoccupied prime pitch on the edge of the site with views over the corn fields under the occasional circling buzzard. A lot of nifty caravan reversing was required but we got in and Billy settled down very happily indeed.

We’ll be comfortable here and can cycle to our hearts content for absolutely everything. This is shut a pleasant part of France, I could happily live here so any length of stay is no hardship. Let’s see what happens.

How we used to get ready for a major expedition to France when we were working, I just do not know. Somehow, in a couple of evenings alone, each following a full day’s work, we’d collect the caravan, wash it, load it, load the car, leave everything ready and, on the final Friday evening, load the fridge, hitch up and get down to Dover in time for a 9:30 PM ferry. I guess our minds were fully focused on the job.

Now things are very different; time is not a burning issue. Now we can collect the caravan on, say Thursday morning, wash it in the afternoon and, if we feel like it, casually load a few things either in the car or caravan, do a bit more on Friday when the mood takes us, finish off on Saturday and dawdle down to Dover for any darn ferry we like, in this case, one at 7:30 PM – nominally, at least. We tried to increase the pressure on ourselves by, on Saturday morning, first returning our new Lafuma chairs and then returning to purchase the very same pair of chairs back again (please don’t ask!) but there was still plenty of time wasn’t there? Traffic should be light on Saturday afternoon and we didn’t need to leave home until about 4:00 PM, did we?

About 10 miles out, Carol started questioning whether she had locked the back door. A quick phone call to our neighbours reassured us that it was, indeed, locked. Fine. About 20 miles out I suddenly realized that, having removed the boot cover to facilitate loading, I had carelessly left said boot cover languishing in the garage instead of covering the somewhat valuable contents of our boot. Drat! Double drat!! It’d take an hour to return home and get back to where we currently were. Not time for that and make our ferry. I did have a boot liner which is black and, given suitable support improvisations, could be pressed into service as a cover. OK, good, keep going. About 60 miles out at the Dartford Crossing, I was calmly watching speedy solo cars overtake our lumbering caravan outfit. Some of said cars had euro number plates, others had a GB plate afixed. I had neither. TRIPLE DRAT!!! My sexy magnetic removable GB plate was also languishing in the garage. No matter, easily fixed – buy one at Dover in a service station as we top up with diesel.

Strewth – £1.31 a litre at both filling stations in Dover! This wouldn’t be a captive market, by any chance, would it? Oh well, so be it, 45 minutes to ferry departure so fill up, buy a GB sticker, and drive on to check in. Departure time, 8:45 PM. "Have we missed the 7:30 PM ferry?" "No, it’s running an hour late." "OK, thanks."

About eight coach-loads of revolting rug rats greeted us in the ferry boarding lines. Blasted bank holiday weekends and school holidays. We really should have known. In previous years we have travelled either a week before or a week after this. The ferry got even later (due, supposedly, to previous industrial action in France) and it actually departed at 9:05 PM. £14 each got us into the Club Lounge, mainly to avoid the bedlam of the screaming horrors running riot all over the boat but also for a desperately needed glass of bubbly and some coffee and biscuits. We at least now have no smoking in public; now it’s time to address children-free facilities for the civilized travelling public, too. According to the steward, several French ports remain blockaded to target the oil refineries. What the hell, I’m on the the side of the militants this time.

Disembarking at 11:40 PM French time, unwelcome rain was falling but we pulled in to our favoured overnight autoroute service area, the Aire des Deux Caps, safely at about midnight for a reality-correcting bottle of vino and a picnic. It rained pretty much all night but the noise on Billy Bailey’s roof lulled us to sleep.

We used to be able to do this on autopilot. Let’s hope it was just "one of those days" and that it doesn’t become "one of those trips".