On arriving back from ou Vichy shopping trip on Thursday night there was the note from the camp site owners offering a magical mystery tour on Friday.
So waking up to a beautiful morning we headed in to town to our favourite shop to look for table to stand our BBQ on but no such luck. Following a pleasant lunch of pate and wheat biscuits we headed over to the main entrance to meet up with the other participants of which there were more than expected. There was about 24 guests in all with approx ten cars. We were joined by another English couple from Yorkshire who were happy to be passengers and together with John, the camp site owner, the 'Groves' in their 4x4 led the way.
To anybody watching it looked like a major traffic jam on the pretty much empty roads. All you could see was the British 4x4 followed closely by a mixture of Dutch, French and English cars with this idiot in a 4x4 holding everybody up. Anyway after about fifteen kilometres or so we arrived at the mill after going down a long track to where Le Patron was cutting the grass in his garden come temporary car park. A short way away was a small building with the noise of a diesel engine turning over and with smoke belching at regular intervals from the chimney,it was quite impressive.
The Mill was originally built in 1882 by Le Patron's father and he had worked there for many years as a child, teenager and adult before becoming a baker after his father decided to close the mill. About thirty years ago when the mill was really a wreck and all the machinery destroyed (upon the orders of the French Tax office) he decided to rebuild the old mill and bring it back to its original glory. He then purchased the other half share from his younger brother and set to with his two sons to rebuild the mill as a complete labour of love. He needed to replace all the machinery and over many years he scoured the country for the bits that he needed too make it work. The diesel turbine which was in place in 1924 was broken after many months work repairing cracked cylinder heads etc it started after forty years at the first attempt. That's Swiss for you. This engine was used to generate power to run the mill when their was insufficient water to drive the water mill wheel. He and his two sons used three complete trees to build a new wheel which took almost a year to build.
The tour was due to last about thirty minutes but due to the number of people and his pleasure at having so many interested parties that he got so existed that the tour lasted over ninety minutes. This man deserves a big pat on the back for his efforts to recreate an old Flour Mill from the broken buildings and machinery so that others can enjoy it. On the way back to the camp site John was explaining more details about our location and how he loves the hills and views over the valleys. Apparently John and Jane used to own a camp site on the South Of France and then moved on to join Eurocamp and finally decided to take over the site at Ebreuil quite some years ago.
Tonight we are having a BBQ and so with a large Costco rib eye steak between us and some sausages we demolished it with salad and a little taste of wine. Truly great!
After dinner we did our usual walk around the site and met this couple from Durham in their large motor home who had recently been at the D Day landing celebrations in Normandy. They have this great memory of Barack Obama smiling and meeting and greeting people whilst, before he arrived, our Prime Sinister Mr Gordon bloody stupid Brown, was standing there ignoring everybody and looked like he was attending his own funeral. As soon as Barack arrived he put on his stupid smile and pretended that he loved everybody and once Barack had moved on he went back to his moping ways. What a W****R.
A quick shower in the caravan and off to bed.
