Saturday, July 09, 2011

Thursday 7th July- Woke up before the 0645 alarm-but it got worse


You know what its like when you have planned an early start that you always wake up early, well we do. So at 06.50 we were drinking our cup of  tea and then followed by a swift breakfast and by 0730 were manoeuvring the caravan from the site with the movers, thank god for movers as it would have been impossible to position the caravan on the site and move it around.
At 0750 wee drove down through the site to the wash block to empty the loo and have a quick shower and by 0810 we leaving the site as the heavens opened and the rain just chucked it down, thank heavens we had started earlier than planned.
Wer headed North up the Motorway via Brive and then on to Le Mans where we went round the East of the City to then on to Beaumont sur Sarthe where we arrived at the outskirts of the town at about 1630, not bad really considering we a a couple of Loo stops and almost an hour for lunch.
Jen had also put on the Sat Nav to give extra help and as we headed in to the town we had to look for a D road on the right to the campsite, the Sat Nav was going bananas saying turn right and Jennifer was saying I am not sure if this is correct and after taking the D road it turned to be the wrong one and so we went round in a big loop and started again but took a different road and the Sat Nav lady seemed very happy only the road it took us down was designed for small cars and not 13 metres of car and caravan and the roads got smaller and smaller, over and old Roman brick bridge, and there is no way to turn around as the roads were only about six metres wide and we finally arrived at a junction with no chance whatsoever of getting us to turn right and the road ahead said NO ENTRY, Bl**dy hell what to do when suddenly out of the blue and old guy appeared and understood our serious problem and took over traffic control and told cars to turn around or go back and then waved us quickly up the one way road the wrong way which thankfully rejoined the D road we were looking for, boy that was close as we could have been there for years otherwise.
The Municipal site we had booked in advance and in the email it confirmed that a twin axle caravan was acceptable but when we arrived there was this big sign saying NO twin axle caravans and units weighing over 3.5 tons and we were a twin axle and weighed 4 tons. Could it get worse but anyway I went to reception and said we had a booking and they let us in phew. Nice site and the wash block was the best so far although perhaps not enough shower cubicle’s if it was busy.
In the evening we drove back in to town to a nice restaurant in the Hotel where a few minutes later loads of motorbikes and cars tuned up as they were part of the Tour de  France but thank heavens they were not sue to go through where we were.When we had walked through the Hotel bar suddenly Jennifer spotted the guy that had helped us earlier and so we thanked him and he gave Jennifer a big kiss. 
An excellent meal and we went back to a hopefully good night’s sleep as we don’t need an early start tomorrow.