N46.22717 W1.54670 - SAINT-CLÉMENT-DES-BALEINES, ÎLE DE RÉ - 12€/24 hrs. All services inc electricity. Toll 8€ single for Île de Ré.

After leaving Cherves-Richemont we needed to find LPG or GPL whatever you want to call it! Mike consulted his trusty 'My LPG' app and found that we could get it at Leclerc, Cognac . Off we trot, do our shopping, eat our lunch and then look for the LPG pump at the fuel station. Can't find it, looked a second time, still can't find it. Go on to next one at Intermarché. This time I get out to look for the right pump. We get ourselves set up - no gas! Cashier comes out from her little box to tell us the pump doesn't work! A quick reccy on My LPG tells us there's one at Auchan, which is on our route so off we go again, around the same roundabout we'd been round about six times already. We're in luck this time and we get our gas.

We arrived at Carole & Ken's, near Verteuil-sur-Charente, where we were going to spend the rest of Saturday and Sunday. We had the usual lovely, warm welcome from both of them and settled ourselves down in their sunny garden for a catch-up on what they'd been doing since we saw them in Spain.

In the evening we went to a local bar/restaurant for a very nice meal and on Sunday they took us out for a drive around . We were going through a town called Rochechouart when we spotted what appeared to be cars and a few motorhomes on show so we stopped for a look. There weren't that many motorhomes, you don't always get the big exhibitions here that you might get in the UK but we looked at the ones that were there, one of which was a Bavaria. We disliked the finish - bits of paper covering screw-heads! Mike got talking to the salesman, he told him he didn't think much to the quality of the finishing touches and that we had a Rapido so the guy said the only one to compare with was a Hymer. He also said regarding the finish that 'you get what you pay for'. On a 50,000€ motorhome you expect to get paper covering some of the screw-heads - I don't think so!

Rochechouart has a pretty magnificent château but unfortunately I'd not got my camera with me for photos. After a walk around and a coffee outside a café we continued our trip. Next up was a very pretty, though tiny village . On the way home they took us to a war memorial to those members of the resistance who died during WW2. A very large, impressive memorial with stone carvings around the bottom depicting the story of the war from start to finish.

On Monday, we left Ken & Carole and headed to the Île de Ré. We arrived and parked ourselves here. Last night we walked around the village to look for a restaurant. The one I'd picked turned out to be closed on Monday's and Tuesdays and the other which was much more expensive had no-one in it. We didn't fancy being the only ones in there so we came back to the can and had pasta! Saved ourselves about 100€!

Today, we woke up to rain - not a surprise as it was forecasted but we were rather hoping the forecasters would be wrong. It has rather mucked up our forward planning for the next few days.