Monday 28th November

We kind of got stuck in Jouques, free aire and free electric does that to us.

And we had to find space for the “Where you going to put that”. I spent all day moving things around, making sure the weight distribution was ok just to find a space for the bloody thing. I found a great space for it but when I told Lucy I had to go and take it out of the bin.

Stella has suprised us today. Not once did we get, “Turn around when possible”, she found us a really nice road through a   mountain pass, some squiggly bends but these were amateur squiggles now that we are fully professional squiggly roaders.

First stop was Lidl’s of course. Red wine levels were depleted, good job Lucy doesn’t drink red wine, we’d just park in a Lidls’ car park for the rest of our lives. Old boy behind us in the queue only had three things so we let him in – guess what he had in his basket, there’re no prizes because it is so obvious. Red wine, baguette and cheese – lunch sorted.

Lucy let rip with hundreds of photos, the sun was out and we were off to a free aire – life is sweet.

Imagine that you are on a flat road and everywhere around you is flat, all of a sudden you are in a deep canyon from one of the old Wild West movies, this was our day. The views were fantastic, once again, but everything was right up close and it was difficult to get a decent photo until we got near the top and stopped for lunch.

It was sunny so I got the chairs out thinking that we could have a lovely picnic by the side of the road but our ever chilly mortal put the dampeners on that and we had to sit inside. 

All i heard was click, click, click from the boss. She was happy and taking photos keeps her quiet; I like that.

Parts looked like Tuscany. The Romans have been here, some of the roads are straight and land was given to old centurions once they had retired. 

We even found a town that looked like an Italian hill top village. It had an aire with water (we really needed water) but she who must be obeyed said no – move on.

And then we got closer and it looked even better and still she said move on. I always do what Stella tells me. Note that I have activated the cruise control and Frankie is operating all by himself allowing me to have a little snooze. The town is called Gordes and the main reason we didn’t stop was because the aire costs €8 per night PLUS €3 for water. Did look nice though and next time we might stop.

As you can see the roads improved – not. Every 150m there was a lay by just in case something was coming towards us.

It looked like the Tour de France has been this way, lots of writing on the roads but we didn’t see that anyone had written Frankie,

We are about to reach warp three as we enter another gorge.

And more twisty turney bits. I have a rough idea where we have been today but our map doesn’t show how interesting the roads have been.

I’ve had a great day, the drive has been interesting without being over strenuous and it looks like Frankie brake warning light has either corrected itself (at long last) or blown a fuse.

We reached our aire in Malemort du Contat (My spell checker says that is Bad Death) and had a quick walk round. Saw everything in three minutes including three washing places, two hairdressers, two pizzerias and a shut down bakers. Bearing in mind that France has the most wonderful cuisine (according to the French) why are there so many pizzerias? Answer me that Raymond Blanc. I read an article today about how the French Chefs went to the UK and saved us all from fishfingers and soggy chips. I think they need to go back and save the French from pizzas.

Heres is the road going out of Bad Death so it looks like Napolean has been this way. The trees on the left have been trimmed and the only noise in the town has been the wood chipper and the church bells.

I’m writing this as our dinner is cooking. I checked the fridge out last night and we had six different cheeses in it. After a quick google I found a recipe that not only would help cure some of that problem but also make inroads into the pasta mountain that has been quietly growing in the corner. Spaghetti Mozzarella Bake was the chosen target from the BBC good Food website (I couldn’t be bothered to trawl through all 24 recipe books to discover that we don’t have that recipe). Instead of spaghetti I used tagliatelle and instead of two tins of chopped tomatoes I replaced one of them with baked beans that we bought in Slovenia. 

I thought they were baked beans and the picture on the tin looked like some of Mr Heinz’s bestest but what was in the tin is a mystery. Reclancener was the name on the tin and all the ingredients are in Slovenian – please don’t tell me it is vegetarian dog food.

If there are no more blogs you know what has happened!!