Mike got woken up early by the animals at the market - not me, slept like a log. Lazy morning start, nothing unusual there! After a dry pleasant evening last night, it was raining again and not what we were hoping for.

Me driving again today . we got to MONTREUIL-BELLAY and I decided that's where we'd stop for lunch. We have stopped here before and from the parking there's a nice view of the Château turrets. I also remembered that the route we took out of the village was a single track road but we managed today without meeting anything coming the other way. Don't fancy getting out to look around as the parking is sandy surface and wet!

After Montreuil-Bellay we had 22km of straight road before a roundabout and then more straight road (90 kph). We got so excited when we actually came across a curve in the road that we bounced around in our seats with joy and behaved in a generally rather silly, childish way (what do they say about old people regressing to childish behaviour, doesn't bode well for us) - but we enjoyed it.

We're now at VERTEUIL sur CHARENTE N 45.979809 E 0.235380. We stayed here in September. Today, so far, there's only us and one other camping car a bit different from the time before. It's a very nice little village where, I read, a fish & chip van run by an anglophile frenchman is in the square on Thursday evenings. Shame it's raining!

The Aire is by the leisure park which has a small pretty river running alongside it. You can walk across the river via a wooden footbridge to continue your walk around the narrow streets. The narrow streets were something which bothered me ( width is a bit of a bugbear for me) as I wanted to finish my drive at our destination and not halfway there! There is, I believe a very nice Château that has guided tours at weekends but so far we've only been using this place as an overnight stop before visiting friends.

We had a reasonable drive down after lunch, mostly dual carriageway. Mike thought I was going to turn him into truck freight as I overtook a lorry at one point. I was a bit close alongside on that one but I had to make sure I had room between me and the barrier didn't I! He just panicked a bit! Hee hee!

I didn't much care for the left turn we had to make from one two lane dual carriageway across another two lane carriageway but we got across without being splattered! Talking about being splattered, I think I might have committed multiple murder today. A flock of birds flew up from the field next to the road right into the path of the camper. Unfortunately, I heard at least two thumps.

Yesterday and today combined is the furthest I've driven a camper so I'm pretty pleased with myself. Today is probably the longest time I've driven anything since I used to travel back and forth to Calais on my own so now I'm feeling a bit tired and my own personal chef is cooking dinner (as he so often does) and going to use the pressure cooker for the first time!

FREE