15. Apr, 2016

15. Apr, 2016

15. Apr, 2016

My apologies I have noticed that entries between 6th & 10th June inclusive are missing for some reason. If I find the text I will insert it.

THURSDAY 11-6-15

We left Amboise this morning making our way to Muides, it's a fairly short trip along the side of the Loire river. We deliberately didn't use the toll road (A10/E05/E60 (Euro numbering!)) as we had made this trip before and the 'B' road is absolutely fine, better than the 'A' roads we tried using back nearer the seaside.

The purpose of this visit was to pop to a local farmer/wine grower (GPS: N47.661886 E1.526352). We like his red wine very much and buy one or two 10ltr boxes as opposed to bottles due to the space and weight, each time we pass through. We can find it from memory now, which is just as well really, given the performance of the Satnav. We initially bought 2x10ltrs, then The Chef thought we should buy a third, and I of course agreed, and then when she reappeared with the third plus a small cheese, I remembered that we already had some of the wine left at home which we had picked up on the way back from Spain. Still at least there'll be a glass or two for us to sit outside in the garden with. That is of course once I've built the patio and paths and laid a lawn. Still the wine will keep, and at my current rate of progress on the garden project, it may improve with age.

After our purchase we made our way here to the Aire at Meung-sur-Loire (GPS: N47.823743º W1.697565º) where we will spend the night. We didn't bother wandering around the village or down by the river as we have been here before and there's not much to it really, and so instead we put our two lightweight folding chairs over the low steel mesh fence behind the motorhome and in to the local play park. It was very handy being able to relax with some shade under a tree right behind us as it has been another very hot day. I checked the temperature on the vehicle dashboard at 18:30 and it showed 28.4°C, though I would think an allowance must be made for the latent heat which would have built up in the steelwork under the bonnet, but I still reckon it was a good 24°C.

This evening’s meal was a bit of a treat - bangers and mash, yup, bangers and mash. Comprising mashed potato using Froggie tatties, Bisto granules which we'd bought with us and the remaining four pork sausages I made the other day, and very nice they were too, with the star of the show being a tin of marrowfat peas (The Chef doesn't go much on garden) purchased at home and dragged all the way to Istanbul and back. She cooked it near the back of the vehicle using a portable LPG double ring cooker with grill, the first time it had ever been used, so dragging it all this way wasn't a complete waste of time.

We were joined by a new neighbour who, due to the narrowness of each parking space, had to get in reasonably close to us. Personally I think he'd probably had a frog’s leg and snail cold meat salad at lunchtime, and was drawn to the smell of our Bisto gravy and proper food.

We had a dessert as a treat - a fruit filled individual flan with Greek yoghurt. Nobody does crusty baguettes and pastries quite like the French.

It started to get even warmer this evening because we'd had some rain showers which forced us to close the habitation door. Ventilation was then only through the two top skylight vents until I realised of course that we could open the side windows, so the kitchen window got an extremely rare use.