France 2016 - Days 5 and 6

Monday

We were up quite early and were packed up ready to leave about 9.45am.  We can certainly recommend the Chateau de Chanteloup for anyone wanting to stay near Le Mans.

We had decided to use the fastest route to our overnight site.  Though we can't make use of the speed we could do the roads are so much better for towing the caravan.  We stopped for coffee then headed round the south of Paris actually going quite near to Versailles.  Lunch was a sandwich bought at our coffee stop and then we headed off to Mesnil-St-Pere, stopping off at a supermarket.  When we arrived there was a queue of one large British motor home which was towing a Nissan Qashqai on a trailer and two large British caravans.  The one in front of us had a slide out!  We went into reception to book in for the night only to be told that as we hadn't booked and they had no dry pitches they were basically full ☹️ The staff were very unhelpful and said that they couldn't suggest anywhere else and suggested that we stop at the side of the road.  We pulled out of the site and stopped to consider our options in the caravan and decided to ring our next site, Val de Bonnal, and see if we could arrive a day early.  A lovely young lady said it was no problem and what time would we arrive.  So it was back in the car - only another 125 miles! 

It started to rain about 25 miles from our destination and by the time we arrived it was pouring.  We had a bit of a fiasco finding the site as the satnav took us somewhere completely different.  I had set it using co-ordinates so either I made an input mistake or the numbers on the website are wrong.  Anyway Richard has now decided that we will get a proper caravan satnav!

Le Val de Bonnal is on the banks of the River L'Ognon and most of the pitches were wet.  There are hard standings but you have to cross puddly grass to get to it.  Anyway we pitched up (in the pouring rain) and hunkered down for the night.  Before we left home Richard had put his wellies in the car and I had laughed - egg on face time!

One of the things I noticed today is that we always seemed to be going downhill - well I suppose we were heading south!


Tuesday

When we woke up it was still raining and did so for a good part of the day.  We walked round the site trying to find two pitches together that were dry.  Most of the site is for the tenting holiday companies from across Europe but we managed to find a couple of pitches just behind where we were.  We moved the caravan and set up camp again - awning up in the rain but we need some more dry space.

I sat down to sort out the blog and found that I had lost all the hard work I had done on our journey yesterday (see yesterday's  blog) - I will say no more on that subject.

Penny and Jim arrived about 17.45 and got on to their pitch OK but whether they will get off is another matter!  Fortunately we've noticed a tractor driving around.

We decided to try out the snack bar on the site and had quite a good meal sitting beside the torrenting river!