Woke early Saturday morning and did our last packing and said our goodbyes to our Dutch hosts before heading on our journey to Angouleme. The countryside changed dramatically with less trees, more rolling countryside and vineyards as far as the eye could see. A very different landscape to the rest of the Dordogne. Noticed loads of motorhomes en route but no British so the plan of speaking to British motorhomers had gone out the window. Most motorhomers seemed to be French with the odd Dutch mingled in between. Stopped at Angouleme to break the journey as back aching sitting in the car seat. We were not too impressed with the city – first of all had an interesting conversation in the Post Office trying to buy two stamps to send cards back to Britain. Have you ever wondered how hard it can be to buy stamps – well we found out here. Queued and realised it was the wrong queue, tried another counter assistant who could not find any stamps and had to get a colleague to find them for her. She then tried to sell us 10 in a strip and finally someone came over and showed us the automatic machine that printed out stamps on sticky bits of paper. Walked up to the church which had a beautiful facade but a rather lavatorial inside. Lunch a pretty frugal affair of salad and omelette whilst people watching. Visited the municipal museum which was free and jam packed with fossils, fine art and north African artifacts. Quite a little gem of a find down a back street and free. Apparently there is a museum to the Resistance but this was closed on a Saturday. Finally tried to get out of the underground car park and found the machine would not take 10 euro notes and give change. French non existent – another lesson to be learnt must brush up on schoolgirl French and learn so more languages before embarking on the motorhome adventure. This made it impossible to try to talk to the security guard to ask for change – gave up, gestured a lot and managed to find some change to get out of the car park.
Our next stop along the way was Coucousac a very small hamlet where we stayed in a gite owned by a British couple Roy and Irene. They had lived in France for 10 years having moved from the South East of England. The gite was fabulous with everything you could wish for right down to lavender bags in the drawers and a welcome pack of wine, butter, cheese, orange juice, bread and coffee waiting for us. This gite was a much nicer one than the last one – black bin bags provided for rubbish and towel s in the bathroom. Just goes to show how different properties can be. Suppose at least with the camper van we will know exactly what we are getting – you can fill it with as little or as much as you wish. Only 111 more working days until it arrives. Views from the gite across the fields of sunflowers which apparently had come up late due to the dry spring here in France. Had a drink on the terrace with Roy and Irene who were motorhomers too. They shared their experiences with us and gave us some valuable hints on where to go and some of the pitfalls of motorhoming although the joys seemed to outweigh the stories of flat leisure batteries and poor campsites. It seems that people watching in motorhomes take on a new meaning as you watch people manoevering over grey water disposal points ,into cramped parking placesand watching them putting up awnings , awnings on top of awnings and tv’s in their tent spaces. They also shared with us their ACSI booklet and French Passion book and told us stories of visits to French farms selling wine, honey or fruit.
Decided to do nothing and woke up late Sunday , no internet signal so feel a little that arm has been chopped off. If there is a downside to this place it must be that there is no WFI – another job when we get home will be to check out IPOD’s as we need something that will work while we motorhom
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