8th September On Our Way But A Bit Lost!

Ian was up with the lark when he was woken at 2.30am by the milkman making his deliveries down Amy's road. He couldn't get back to sleep and I was probably no better as I always worry about sleeping through the alarm and missing the ferry.

So at 4am we were both up, bright eyed and bushy tailed ready for the M20 closures as the security checks continue. It took over an hour on theM2 route to Dover port so thankfully no holdups on route.

Waiting to get through passport control and security. There were police checking in boots and backs of vans, so Ian had to warn the policeman to be ready to catch anything that came tumbling out of Rolo's boot as it was so tightly packed. Definitely no room for an escaped convict with us.

Sunrising as we left Dover on an earlier crossing. Got on the 6am crossing instead of 6.55am so we were pleased not to be waiting around. Cinnamon buns and coffee for breakfast while we planned our route. We decided on the Paris route going west via Versailles. Luckily we had applied for our low emission pass as all the routes now seem to go through low emission zones.

A cafe vennois for our coffee break. They have posh coffees in the French Macdonald's and real cups - no paper cups over here.

With the weather hotting up to 36C it was necessary to wear a hat when we had Rolo's roof down. By this evening it cooled down to the high 20s for our overnight stop in Blet.

Our route took us by several impressive castles such as this one in Château de Sully-sur-Loire found east of Orleans.

We got in a bit of a pickle when it came to locating our accommodation for tonight. I was convinced that I'd put all the details into Google maps and didn't twig that the road numbers that I was expecting didn't match up with what I was seeing on the map. I think after 9 hours on the road and having being up for hours that we weren't the sharpest tools in the box so neither of us cottoned on to the fact that we were in Bourges rather than Blet looking for a house. It was made more challenging as the place I thought we were going to was down a closed road with the diversion going on cobbled streets! Made worse as we managed to do the circuit not once but twice 😅. As we couldn't get to the location we decided to park up and try and find it on foot. It wasn't until I asked Ian to check the address that we found that we were 36 km north of our true destination and another 38 minutes drive!!!

Anyway we arrived only 10 minutes later than our estimated ETA with just enough time for a shower before sitting down for dinner with our hosts Patrick and Chantal. Both couldn't speak English so we were really pulling out all the stops with our conversational French. I think it went pretty well. We had a lovely evening with them and enjoyed a dinner of a duck pate surrounded by pastry served with homemade bread; pork in mushroom sauce with fried new potatoes; goat, sheep and cow cheeses; tiramisu all washed down with Bergerac red wine. We'll sleep well tonight 😁