OK hands up all of you who thought we wouldn’t get this far.

Well the ferry crossing went well apart from the fact that I mislaid my purse with all our money and cards in it. I had to be escorted by the purser to retrieve my purse from the van on the lower deck. The ferry crossing took 2 hours from Dover to Dunkirk.

We travelled from Dunkirk heading south passed Calais, now some of you might be thinking why didn’t they cross to Calais in the first place, because it was cheaper to go with DFDS to Dunkirk. Anyway we took the A16 passing Boulogne-sur-Mer  and ending up at our destination St Valery-sur-Somme staying at Chateau de Drancourt.  We stayed there for 3 nights.

As we want to make it to Valencia for the final Moto GP of the season we are not stopping during the day to sight see as we hope to cover France on the way home. At present though we are not sure if the GP will go ahead following the tragic accident on Sunday.

On leaving St Valery we decided not to take the motorways and have been following the D roads which are much more interesting as you are passing through the countryside and villages. We stopped for the night at Marcilly-sur-Eure, which is close to Dreux. Still managed to get Emmerdale though with our £50 satellite dish in the middle of a forest.

Finding out that not as many people in France speak English as you would think or as we would like, the phrase book is coming in handy. I just point to the phrase in the book and get an answer in French, oh well.

Next we travelled past Chartres, Vendome and Chateau-Renault to Amboise where we stayed on our first Aire.  An Aire is a place where you can park your motorhome overnight, but is not a campsite. It can be just a car park with no facilities or it can be a nice area with some facilities and electricity, this can be free or for a small charge, most are run by the local council. The Aire we stayed on was on an island in the middle of the river Loire. Had time today to have a look round Amboise, stopped for a drink at a cafe, I had a wine 100ml 2€ and Kev had a 500ml beer, 6€20. No more beer for Kev in France!!!

Today we are in Gueret we travelled via Loches, Chateauroux and Argenton-sur-Creuse. On the way we stopped at a small market in Clion.