Where's Frankie?

A Very Blue Day

Saturday 25th October

Up early, showered but not shaved. Now that I’ve got a bit more time on my hands I’ve decided to grow a beard. Mick Monk and Dave Marshall have shown me how distinguished I could look and if things go wrong I can always do Santa at Christmas. It’s just at that horrible itchy stage and nearly got removed.

We leave Frankie (with the other five vans on the four van aire) and wander into town. The launderette was a bit confusing but Lucy managed to work out you put your money into the machine in the corner and press the button of the machine you want to operate. The washing powder machine was number 9 so put €1 in the machine, press number 9 and a dose of powder comes out of the machine the other side of the shop. Easy, peasy, the washers are marked up with numbers and so are the driers. We’ve cracked the secret and can barely read the information boards.

We walk into town, up another big hill and find the chateau.

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This was built for the Mairie of Nogent Le Roi in 1880. My idea of the Mairie was that he/she was the Mayor of the town and look what his townspeople have built for him. Can you imagine Boris getting somewhere to live like this, let alone one of our local councillors. It’s not a large town by any means.

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Not only rater nice house but it is attached to some rather large gardens with some wild deer roaming freely. We took the 4 km walk around the grounds and found what we can only think is a folly.

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After our early morning exertions we headed back to the launderette just in time to show a French woman, who had the benefit of lots of signs, how to use the machines – tres complicate apparently!

Back to Frankie and Lucy hung all the washing up across the back bathroom while I pretended to do manly jobs like clean the windows and navigate to our next destination.

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Chartres Cathedral is certainly eye grabbing. It can be seen from miles away in a similar fashion to Lincoln Cathedral but it is much bigger. The cathedral was built fairly quickly so most of it is built to a similar design. We had spoken to our neighbours in Nogent Le Roi who had warned us about the narrow streets so we tried not to go through any 3.5 tonne warning signs but it was so difficult, honest. Eventually we did find a large car park on the edge of town and walked in (the long way round). I’ll let most of these pictures speak for themselves and recommend tat if you get the chance, pop in a visit, they even let half beard hippy types in nowadays.

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We had lunch in a park with this as the view, sorry Emma, more French lunch I’m afraid. I don’t get out much but I saw something that I thought was funny. A group of half a dozen teenagers came into the park trying to look grown up – two of them were smoking – electronic cigarettes!!!MG 2138

The view behind our picnic bench.

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A very small part of the stone chioristry, it took 200 years to complete.

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Another half timbered building. I’ll try and stop taking photos of these buildings, you must be getting sick of them by now.

After Chartres, time was getting on and we walked back to Frankie (the long way round again) and set off about 4.30pm. We don’t like arriving at an aire too late just in case all the spaces have been taken but we arrived here in Marboue (number 6 on the second map above) and it’s only half full. Did I mention it is free? Most of the aires around here are free, it seems to be the ones on the coast or near large towns that charge. We are facing a large grass area and if we could stand on Frankies roof we would be able to see the Loir river, not the Loire, this is the Loir which feeds into the Loire, it’s still a fair size river though.

Since tomorrow is Sunday we may just hang around here another day, get the bikes out have a ride, then again, we might do something different, who needs plans?

2 thoughts on “A Very Blue Day

  1. sue o'meara

    Keep taking the photos. they are a wonderful reminder of the places that you have been.
    Any chance of a map showing your route to date?
    Happy travels, Sue

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