Thursday 17th July- What happened to the weather?

The sky was grey this morning when we awoke. Our plan was to travel and do research on routes (more later) and take some photos but we had second thoughts. Jennifer was planning a wash day followed by touring but it looked like rain and so the washing was called off again.

When we arrived at this site it is through some challenging roads, rather narrow, sharp bends and overhanging rocks. If you get it wrong with the rocks bang goes the caravan roof. So we asked neighbours which way they arrived at the site and therefore as the weather was poor we decided to look at the alternate routes. We headed west towards Cahors and stopped at Vers which we thought would be a good site only to find the fair had arrived and the place was full of caravans and roundabouts etc. Not for us we thought as this can often be the problem with Municipal sites. So we headed up to the A20 and found the road had improved considerably since we last did this route. Then we headed off to Figeac and then followed the road to Cajac back to Laranagol. This route is much better as you avoid most of the overhanging rocks and the road is wider and straighter and so we decided that this is the route we would use going home. Not that we are anxious to leave here but as we did not know when we would leave we have not booked any ferries home. In August this might push us to ferries at the wrong time, we shall see.

We also started looking at the route in general and decided that we would go home on a completely different route to the way we came. The way we plan is up to Limoges and then on to Poitiers and then head in the general direction of Le Havre where we shall try to book on LD ferries back to Portsmouth. We have three books on caravan sites but most of them are a little bit light on choice on this route and so we shall have to dig a litter deeper to find what we want particularly as it’s August and the sites may start to get full, we shall see. Neither of us fancy parking in a lay-by for the night but I am sure we will fix something. One thing is sure we cannot go traipsing across the country with a large caravan on the off chance we may find somewhere suitable.

Anyway we headed back to the site and the weather moved from 18 degrees through to 22 degrees and then back again. We spent the afternoon reading and Noel checked email messages and looked at the dire financial news that is emanating from the UK at the moment. We think the stock market has reached its bottom and can hopefully only go up. Gordon Brown and the famous New Labour seemed to have cocked everything up in a big way after having spent the bank by promoting so many government incentives for the unemployed and those who see a way of not working what with job seeking allowance, sick allowance etc it makes no sense to work with high taxes. Perhaps the guys who took care of Kennedy fancy a trip to the UK and relieve us of this madman- Anyway back to reality.

Let’s hope the weather tomorrow is better for our trip on the Villfranche ‘petit train’