Châteaudun, Loir not Loire
Zagan’s looking over his shoulder up the cliff-like side of the château at Châteaudun in wonder. It’s a beautiful motorhome aire beneath the castle and right up against Le Loir river (€0 to sleep here, N48.07172 E1.32422). That’s right, we’re in the Loir Valley, not the nearby Loire Valley to the south; it’s a bit confusing…
Les Trois Hymers! Free aire below the château, Châteaudun
We quit the Chartres campsite this morning at the crack of 11am (ahem) in a flurry of activity; mud scraping, grey water sloshing, loo cassette errrm voiding and on-boarding of a welcome supply of clean water. About 2 meters out of the exit Zagan screeched to a halt, with a mirror full of honk-wasser (smelly grey water) streaming out of the back of us. Must remember to close the tap next time – apologies to anyone heading into Chartres camping anytime soon. Outside we spotted a motorhome had stayed overnight a hundred meters or so from the campsite entrance, the cheek of it (yep, we’re jealous and will be parked there ourselves next time!).
Heading south under a dirt-grey sky, I’m craving the sun. Craig and Joanne’s photos of vivid blue sky in Italy are reminding me of the beautiful feeling of the clear light and freshness of southern Europe (see the Our Bumble files – drop them a line at ourbumble@icloud.com if you can’t see their update dispatches). Various weather websites were consulted yesterday in the hope of some yellow orbs, and there does seem to be some heading our way, tomorrow maybe.
If we can’t have sunshine though, we can have the next best thing La France has to offer: food and wine! Yeah, OK, you might be thinking ‘they’ve only gone and found themselves a Michelin-starred restaurant and blown the entire 2016 Zagan budget on gourmet nosh and vino!’. Do not fear dear readers, we just popped into E. Leclerc, a cathedral-like Mecca-in-marble to the tastebuds, with a bit of 3D TV chucked in.
Two hours and €79 later (hmmm, that’s not far off the 2016 Zagan budget thinking about it) we emerged, our Ferrari-like shopping cart brimming with grub: a kilo of fresh mussels (€5.88), a big bag of frozen Noix de St Jacques (€7.95), 75cl of Cidre Doux (€1.05), four slices of Paté en Croute – it looks similar to the the Chartres pate we saw yesterday! (€1.76), 24 25cl bottles of Bière Blonde (€5.65, just meeting my €1 a litre limit), 10 Pain au Chocolats (€4.45), a 5l box of Ventoux Rouge (€14.30) and a boatload of other stuff. Only the obvious lack of somewhere to store the food and inability to scoff it all finally drove us out of the palace of nosh.
We did manage some veg too – traffic light tomatoes anyone?
On the plus side, we topped off Zagan’s tanks with diesel at €1.059 (76p a litre folks, SWEET!!!) before speeding off at a sedate free-beer-providing 80kph. Through the plains we went, great hedge-less expanses of ploughed brown and stubbly beige. Through agricultural towns not deemed worthy of a 50kph speed limit; we nipped through at 70kph, hardly noticing them.
A concept has developed in here we call the ‘Zagan Minute’ by the way. Explanation: our SatNav tries to predict time to our arrival. We have come to refer to these as Zagan Minutes, and typically 60 Zagan Minutes are about 90 minutes in the real world. We’re that slow.
Châteaudun was chosen from the myriad of aires to aim for as it looked rather pretty. It is. We’re stoked (can we say that anymore – either we’re too old to say it or no doubt the phrase has fallen out of use. How about ‘this place is sick, man’?). We’ve had a wander about and grabbed some pictures. It’s now time to yet some Friday night cooking (moules marinières, wish me luck) eating and quaffing done. Oh, yeah.
The last picture represents the Châteaudun 1870 stand against the Prussians as they invaded France. The locals held out for a while but eventually fell; the lass in the sculpture represents the town.
Cheers! Jay
Oh, yes, France and its food!!! Culinary trip is easy with our southern neighbours! And you can sure pick the right places, free with a castle! Well done! Hope it is a quiet place too. Enjoy the moules!
Great photos, again…
Chateaudun is a little gem isn’t it? Good morning exercise is walking up the steps for the breakfast croissants, I’m sure Charlie would appreciate the early morning walk!
It is Paul, lovely spot. Charlie’s been consulted on the option of those 200 steps in the morning. He’s thinking it over! Cheers, Jay
You know when you take a flight and climb through the clouds into blue sky and sunlight? I think today you’ve done the equivalent in Zagan. You seem to have your travel bug batteries recharged and this post reflects that – have fun guys. BTW the £ is getting stronger over the Euro today. I topped up my CaxtonFX card, helped by setting up a rate alert so they email me when this happens – just in case this is useful.
Paul
When you leave Chateaudun make sure you do a circuit of the airfield. It is the French Air Force (l’Armee de l’Air) base where all France’s obsolete military aircraft are stored. Most are out in the open and can easily be seen from a slow drive by, especially from the height of Zagan. Row upon row of them. There are very few countries this side of the US which do the same, all ours in England being stored in hangars so out of sight.
Drive by on the D955 with the airfield on your right. Immediately you see the main entrance where they have a dramatic ‘gate guard,’ a Mirage fighter plane mounted on a steel rod in its jet pipe, so it points up into the sky almost vertically. Keep driving past the end of the runway on the D955 and 3.5km from the Mirage turn right onto the D130, through Boirville to the crossroads, 2.3km from the D955. Turn right on the D31 and you are circuiting the base. Just over 1.5 km further on all the aircraft come into view on your right.
Take photos surreptitiously as the MPs and gendarmes take a dim view of it, but if you stop you will probably be ignored in a motorhome. There are very few places to stop anyway, but the D31 is a very quiet road.
Top man! We’ve eyeballed the map and can see where you mean. Bring on some sneaky plane photo snaffling… It is normally hard to tell whether Zagan is moving or not, with the speed I drive, so I think we’ll be OK. :-) Jay
Dear Jay and Jules, Thanks for the wonderful posts, we are now back from our tour of France in our motorhome (which we have extended year on year the last four years and finally managed a whole month from second week in Sept to second week in Oct) . This year we travelled clockwise down through the Loire to the Camargue and the coast across to the top of Spain then heading inland to follow the Canal du Midi, up to Bordeaux then back on coast to visit Isle D’Oberon, Nourmantier (another island) then back to Northern France and home. We are so envious of you being back in France its such a fabulous country and so good with campervan and dogs (we have a 10 year old smooth fox terrier Aggie who loves her travels). Keep up the posts – they are going to make the winter dark days and nights bearable until we can get back next year!! Happy travels regards Lynne and Paul PS have you heard of the French Passion sites ? you can buy the book for £25 and then camp free on hundreds of sites offered by vineyards, dairy farms, cheese makers, ostrich farms etc etc they are brilliant and offer a safe, usually very quiet place to rest up. check it out on google if you haven’t already heard of it.
Thanks for all your words, great to see you on the road again.
There is an excellent aire at Arnage, right next to the river, if you are heading that way. It is free and is walking distance from the Le Mans 24 hour track – it’s not in the usual guidebooks, great place to stay.
Regards, Mark
200 steps eh? I counted them on the way up and it came to 196, I think another 4 steps would have done me in lol.
I also seem to remember you need a male to male hozelock connector at the borne to get water, we didn’t use it though as we prefer free ;-)
Cheers,
Pete
Pete
Ah, I can only count to 20 so had to rely on the ‘200 Steps’ sign at the top! Yep, a few of the new service points need those male-male Hozelock connectors but we discovered after a while the previous van owner left 3 of them in here! Cheers, Jay
If you wish to set your satnav settings to say 40mph average speed it will predict your arrival time a little more accurately however it may take you down some interesting rat runs (Side roads and alleyways). We also set ours to ask if we wish to avoid tolls which can be useful as I am a Yorkshireman this reduces stress on the purse strings .
Cracking! We are Notts folks and have a similar aversion to paying for stuff like tolls. We quite like our satnav to suggest a route with a toll, then laugh as ww tell it to avoid it. Having said that we’ve done some tortuous no-fun mountain routes through Greece as a result so have taken to triple-checking routes against paper maps sometimes… Cheers, Jay
Hi Ju & Jay
We had a chat with the weather man and asked him to send you some blue skies x.
Loving the updates as always and despite the weather you are having fun, which is the main thing.
Thanks for the ‘mention’. If anyone cant access the files just drop us an email at ourbumble@icloud.com and we will add their email address to the access permissions.
Take care
Joanne
How’s the Gasit system working out Jay? We are about to install it in ‘Bessie’ our motorhome.
Perfect Andy, working a treat! Still not managed to get through both bottles and been on the road over 3 weeks. Been cool some nights and mornings too so heating been on a fair bit. Gauges working well, just have to remember the float valves are half way down the bottles so they don’t start to move from green to red until each bottle is half empty. Have fun with the install, cheers, Jay
Ah, you have just explained why I thought my gauge wasn’t working properly, I can relax now.