Saturday 30th May
I may have mentioned before that we have a date and are meeting up with friends on the 10th June, in the meantime, we are slowly moving about, looking for free aires, and trying not to drive too far. We’ve nearly made a plan but there’s very little chance of us sticking to it. We moved on from Oradour on Thursday morning moving slowly North and have reached Bellac. Here is our view over a beautifully kept park with a river flowing through it. Can you imagine parking in the local park at home?
Bellac is world renowned for it’s association with La Fontaine, the French poet and writer. There was a local myth which La Fontaine turned into the epic, “The Coach horses and the Fly”, you must remember it. Thought not. He also gave the local red wine lots of praise saying it makes a very good dye!!
Since the sun was out and there were a couple of walks signposted we made lunch and went for an 8.4km ramble. It was almost as good as being in England, the trees and grass were green, the sheep and cows were in the pastures and it was only the fact that the sun was shining and we had to walk on the right hand side of the footpath that we knew that we were in France.
This is where we stopped for lunch, another bridge, next to an old mill.
Next day we were on the move to Montmorillon, just up the road from Bellac. Frankie isn’t one of the longest motorhomes out there, he is a shade under 7m long but there is no way he is going to get himself into one of these bays. This is the official aire, with official signs, official services and an official bin. They need to rethink the official parking bays.
This is the view though, very imposing church (with another behind it and one over to the right). Why build one big church when you can build three.
Heres another view (almost) from the aire. 12th century but rebuilt a few times and latterly the buildings and prison that were on top of it were removed.
More views of narrow streets with higgledy piggledy houses. We have no idea what the boxes either side of the street contain, we can only guess that they hold things of interest for the tourists because of course, today is Monday and the whole bloody (excuse my French) town is shut. It’s also shut on Tuesday!
This town is called “Cite de L’Escrit” (The City of writing is as close as I can get), it is a tourist destination so why on earth is it closed on Monday and Tuesday? The two typewriters are outside the museum, there are specialist pen shops, specialist paper shops and loads of book shops, everyone of them is shut. This country drives me crazy sometimes.
But they did have an estate agent and here is another house to put in with the three from the other day. 10 hectares of prairie, temporary holiday site??
Just look at the throngs of sightseers.
The aire here was a bit too small for us so we kept moving and ended up in Nieuil l’Espoir, nice place on the edge of a large leisure area with lakes, playground, nature hides, walking and cycle paths, forgot to take some photos though!
We had a picnic table next to us so I sat out reading my kindle and a group of young children, taking a short cut home from school, all managed to say bonjour to me, without prompting. I can just imagine the same happening in England – not.
And on Saturday we moved to Vivonne, we’re hovering just to the south of Poitiers trying to make our mind up which way to go but this aire ticked some boxes. When we arrived the market was in full swing and we couldn’t get anywhere near the “No Parking, except for motorhomes” signs so went to the local supermarket where they had a self service launderette. A massive 14kg load machine managed to take all of Lucy’s smalls in one go!
Once the washing had been done and dried (and we’d had to go shopping of course) we went back to the aire and squeezed in. Behind us is a river and to the left is a Tourist Office with free (and fast) wifi).