Heading south!

No one came in the morning to collect money so the night was free!  We quickly packed up and prayed Flo would start – also that she would go into gear – which she did!!  We chatted again to the Belgium lady and they waved us off – all was well!!

In an attempt to save Flo’s gear box we decided to go along the main roads (and the tolls) to get as far south as we could quickly, we’d booked to be in Beynac in the Dordogne by tomorrow!  We chose to go via Rouen rather than Paris, not sure if this was a mistake or not really….there were horrendous roadworks in the centre of the city that took ages to get through and 1^st gear was really playing up. It took about an hour to get through 1 mile, it was so stressful!  We remembered from last year that the satnav loses it’s way on a major junction in the town, thankfully Chris’ instinct kicked in and we took the right road south along the river –that was until the machine decided we were going the wrong way again so we pulled into a car park to turn around.  This decision turned out to be a key event in the week…it was here that Chris remembered Flo has a ‘G’ gear and it works like 1^st!!! Whooppeee!! We turned right out of said car park only to then find we had an ancient old man waving frantically at us, we’d turned the wrong way up a 1 way street!!! Hahahaha! Chris just put his foot down and zoomed up the road before any other cars came! All under control apparently! So funny!! We couldn’t worry as we were too pleased with the G discovery!!

We continued south…the route was Rouen, the N154 to Chatres.  We saw the massive cathedral as we drove past – it’s the biggest  example of a gothic cathedral in Europe.  We stayed on the N154 to Orleans and pushed south to just past Chateauroux where we stopped in a supermarket – as we parked the biggest tropical torrential style rainstorm started and we got soaked just walking to the door!!! We stocked up on all the essentials, our first of France 2014 so everyone was happy!!  

1st French meal!!

We travelled to a small village called Neuillay-Les-Bois; it was a picture-perfect French village with a lovely large lake and a small grassy car park for the aire with a toilet and sink block. When we arrived it hadn’t been raining there – an old friendly French couple werer already there and we exchanged pleasentries in French…I will never cease to be amazed at the friendliness of people in aires! 
Sadly it wasn’t long before the thunderstorm and torrential rain of Chateauroux caught up with us so it was a wet (but hot) evening we had – I felt sorry for the kids as there was a lovely park and walk around the lake which we could have done but we would have been drenched, so they watched films.