Another surprising dot on the map

Tuesday 19^th July

So, what have we been doing the past few days? Time flies when you are having fun.

Sunday we had another day following the Tour de France. Actually, following is used loosely as you can really only go to one spot in the day for a look. It is not like a car rally where you get in a few speccy points. The route on Sunday included 6 climbs and we decided we’d just head for the one closest to where we were staying. We headed out early (8.30) to get there in plenty of time to get a good spot and not have to walk for kilometres. We were 3 hours early – and we were not alone. It was different to the previous day, as we just parked along the side of the road where the bikes would pass, and not in a crowd at an intersection.

Happy dog - he scored his souvenir hat.

The lead riders.

The group containing the yellow jersey rider - Chris Froome.

Again came the caravan of sponsor vehicles and the free stuff. We scored a couple of hats – if we’d been serious we would have borrowed a couple of kids because they were getting lots of stuff thrown at them. Time for lunch in between the goodie giveaway and the feature act and we ended up sitting with an English couple who do a bit of cycling and have been to the tour a couple of times. We had a good position and got a good look at all the riders as they were spread out quite a bit.

All over and done by 2pm and we were able to head home and watch the finish of the day on TV.

Monday – let’s not talk about Monday. We spent the whole day doing two loads of washing. I think the main problem is that the machine heats the water and there didn’t seem to be a ‘give me a quick wash using straight tap water’ option. So we ended up getting a rest day at home and trying to eat all the food we had before moving on today.

This morning we packed and cleaned the gite and hit the road by 10am. Our travel today had us heading west towards the village of Charlieu, with our final destination near the village of Lapalisse. Early in our travels we picked up a guide in a tourist bureau of beautiful detours in France and we have turned to this quite a few times to find little interesting villages to visit. The book is in French but we usually manage to get some idea of what to expect. Charlieu was a quaint little medieval village with an abbey and a convent. I always though convents were for nuns but this one was for monks. We had lunch in the village and enjoyed our little visit here. Some of the history of the convent – in 1910 it was purchased by a wealthy American who wanted to transplant the cloisters to put around his tennis court. It was partially demolished when it got listed as an Historic Monument which meant it couldn’t be taken anywhere.

Another quaint part wooden house this time in Charlieu.

The abbey in Charlieu.

We visited the church in the town and the proud warden was happy to show Rob and another couple the carillon - up 90 steps.

Cloisters at the convent.

From there we headed to Lapalisse and there is a huge castle there. It was 36deg and we decided it was too hot and we were too tired to be visiting the castle this afternoon so we are going there tomorrow first thing on our way to Autun.

Tonight we are staying at a B&B which also has a camping ground and swimming pool. It is owned by a Dutch couple. Apparently there is a network of these sorts of places in France and the Dutch love coming to them. I just found it by searching with booking.com for a place near Lapalisse and at the right price. We have turned up some amazing places on our travels. They have a restaurant here also and we have just had dinner – it was excellent. One of the best salads we have had in our 10 weeks away.

Our B&B for the night

Sitting on the terrace waiting for dinner - spare ribs were fabulous. All the menu items are posted on the wall but they are all in dutch so no help to us at all. 

Number plates in france are usually white or yellow - ours is red which sparks a bit of interest. We have had a couple of people stop and ask about them (it's a lease car) and have also overheard people say 'diplomatique' as they walk past. Diplomatique hasn't scored us any perks though - unless we have parked illegally without knowing and have got away with it. :)

The entrance to our B&B/camping ground. We drove straight past it because we weren't sure what we were looking for, but we then put the GPS co ordinates in to Dora and ended up pretty well at the gate.