Onward to Tours

Sunday 28^th September

Awoke to another sunny day. After showers and breakfast we packed up the van and prepared to leave. We had paid the day before, so that was taken care of. Pausing at the drainage point, we emptied the tank and filled up with water. We are heading for Tours – hopefully the traffic on a Sunday will be OK.

We decide to stop at the Ackerman Cave on the way to get K some fizzy. It is fairly quiet, and I manage to park with no problems. We make the purchase (whilst taking the opportunity for a small wine tasting – I only had a mouthful because I was driving, K finished hers). The satnav was trying to take down a main road to Tours, but we wanted to drive along the river and so ignored her protestations (I know that it’s an electronic GPS based device – but it speaks with a woman’s voice – so we think of it as ‘she’).

We stop for lunch at Langeais, next to the river, close to a bridge. From the bridge you can see the Château de Langeais. We pause for about forty minutes and I stretch my legs. 

The journey is very pleasant, all along the bank of the Loire – although sticking to the speed limit didn’t seem popular with the locals, who overtook me at every opportunity – as usual. We arrived at the camp site ‘Les Acacias’ in La Ville aux Dames at about two o’clock and are pleasantly greeted by a young man who gives us a lovely pitch in the sun. The shower block etc. is fine – haven’t tested the hot water at this point, because I am now up to date with the log, and am writing this on site.

We decided just to stay on the site, as it’s a Sunday and we don’t really want to go anywhere. We sat about and enjoyed the sun – it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. We will cycle into Tours anyway – it’s about seven kilometres. I cooked a home made meatball and chorizo ‘risotto’ for food – far too much again. Will keep some for lunch.

Having fun with the power supply for my laptop. Seems when it gets too hot it stops working. Not sure what to do yet, as it’s a sealed unit – I know from experience that there’s not a lot you can do when they fail. Hopefully, it will keep going until we get back. Just because it’s about twelve years old – really!