We have been looking at Tours for a few days now and we finally decided to make it a stop. No guidebook of France is featuring Tours as one of the cities you should visit. Tours is the kind of town every country needs, there are a lot of things produced here, a lot of things are transported thru here, and a lot of people make a good living here, and it is a good place to live. What it doesn’t have is a lot of cool things for non-residents to look at. It is the French version of Pittsburg or Birmingham.
A pond near the campground.
Our original plan was to drive the 280 kilometers here, check in to the campground and head to town. Based on our quick look around town we would decide whether to stay another day and explore some more or get back on the Autoroute and continue driving to Spain.
While driving I remembered that quite often French campgrounds have extended lunches where you cannot check in. We figured we would arrive at about 1:15, while we were driving Ton did some research and it looked like they would open at 2:30, it was a little frustrating but early enough to take a run into town. But when we arrived there was a sign on the door saying they were closed from 12:00 to 3:30 for lunch. Nowhere but France would a business close for 31/2 hours at lunch. After some muttering by me we both settled in for the 2 hour wait. By the time they reopened there were 7 motorhomes waiting. We will visit Tours tomorrow.
After a wonderful time in Brittany it was time to begin setting south for Spain. We are not in a big hurry so today we headed south 200 km’s to Nourmoutier en Ille. Today was the day of deviations, which is French for detour. We encountered 3 in the drive. Like the US the French are hit or miss on marking the detour. Today one was poorly marked but my instinct and Greta Garmin got us thru it perfectly. The last two were pretty well marked, one was a bit narrow going thru a town, the other was easy once I circled a roundabout 3 times while Ton interpreted signs for me to find the right exit .
Some of the salt marshes near Nourmentier.
Nourmoutier en Ille is out on a prominent peninsula into the Atlantic, but surrounded by miles of salt marshes. There is an island on the peninsula that is accessible by road at low tide, but the road is covered by water at high tide. They have an annual race where runners race the tide as it comes in to cross the road before it is covered by water. I assume they have rescue boats standing by to pick up the losers.
Tractor hauling oysters from the managed beds at the end of the estuary.
It is a nice town and we enjoyed a long walk along a jetty out into the bay with salt making fields on one side and the estuary on the other. The jetty is about 1 mile long and topped with a road where tractors hauling oysters from the oyster beds in the estuary to the processing plants in town pass every few minutes. When we walked in the afternoon the tide was out and the boats in the harbor were sitting on mud, the estuary leading into the harbor was all mud and not very pretty. We decided to take an evening walk and the tide had come in and all of the boats in the harbor were floating and the estuary when covered with water was beautiful .
The view of the harbor when the tide is out.The same harbor 6 hours later with the tide in.
The aire in town is a big parking lot with about 35 other RV’s tonight. The other deviation today was that when I went to pay the €8 for the aire the machine would not take any of our credit cards. We run into this problem occasionally at gas stations because American credit cards still require a signature, European ones do not. This means sometimes at self-service machines our cards are rejected because no one can take the signature. It does not happen often but is a pain when it does. I assumed that was the problem, but when I went back to try with a debit card there were three French people there having the same problem. Finally one of them declared Le Aire est Libre aujourd’hui (the parking is free today). We all cheered and headed back to our RV’s with €8 extra in our pockets!
We were excited because last night when we were walking around town we saw them setting up the market for today. We woke up earlier as the jet lag is finally starting to wear off and headed into town to visit the market. When we got there it turned out to be a swap meet and not a market. We are not swap meet people but decided to take a pass thru to see if swap meets are different in France than the US, and the answer is nope, it is still other peoples junk.
The old city gate to Vendome, on the facade you can see bullet holes from WWII.
Above the town is the remains of a 9th century castle, so we headed up there. The view of the town was nice, but not too spectacular. They did have a pretty garden that we poked around in for a few minutes before heading back into town. By this time it was about 11 am so we decided to take another walk thru the city center to see if any of the restaurants or coffee shops got our attention, but unfortunately none did.
The 9th century castle above the town.
By this time the clouds were threatening a bit so we decided to head back to François for lunch and to make plans for tomorrow. We have three main regions we want to explore this trip, Brittany in France, Galicia in Spain, and the entire country of Portugal. Tomorrow we are heading to Brittany.
The statue to Marshal Rochambeau who helped defeat the British at Yorktown to end the American Revolution.
We spent the rest of the day watching the coming and going of other campers. This is always good entertainment for us. Unlike yesterday where we had the place to ourselves, today there are about 14 other vans here, the majority form the Netherlands.
We woke up early with only two things in mind for the day. Head over to the Valrhona Chocolate company, and then jump in François and do a marathon drive on the Autoroute to Sens.
Both missions were accomplished, when we went out for our walk to the chocolate company we were surprised to see two river cruise ships tied up to the docks right next to the campground. The fog was dense and you could barely see them but they loomed in the dark. We think all of the passengers had already taken off for their day trips as the crew of one of the ships were engaged in a vigorous snow ball fight on the top deck which is usually used for the passengers to enjoy the sun and the views.
The pedestrian bridge across the Rhone shrouded in fog.
We arrived at the factory and Ton did some sampling and shopping while I sampled and tried to figure out why our internet was out of order. Ton was much more successful than I was. After much sampling and comparison we departed Valrhona with a kilo of chocolate to take home to Oregon.
François sitting on the banks of the Rhone, trust me.
We quickly packed up and headed to the autoroute. At the entrance to the autoroute I was distracted going up to the gate where you get the ticket to enter. In France they have a Telepass station where you put a transponder in the car and do not need to stop at the toll gates. As I drove up to one of the two entrance gates I was not paying attention, so when I pulled up to the machine that usually dispenses the ticket you need, nothing happened, and then after a few seconds a recording began lecturing me in French about the fact that I had entered the telepass gate, after about 20 seconds of being scolded in French, and having a picture taken of our plate (there was a flash at the rear of François which I presume was a camera going off), the machine dispensed the ticket we needed, the barrier went up and we were on our way. I fear there may be a fine in our future.
Windshield shot of a castle off of the A6.
The rest of the day consisted of us navigating the 430 km’s on the autoroute, and paying a huge toll at the end. Before heading back to the aire in Gron which is our normal beginning and end of trip stop we also filled up a thirsty François to the tune of €120. The days when we see the least are often the most expensive.
Our plan when we arrived was to head towards Spain, so of course we drove north today to Chartres. Along the way we decided to visit Normandy and Brittany on our way to Spain, so we had to divert north to get to Normandy.
We decided to visit Chartres primarily to see its Gothic Cathedral. We visited Sens Cathedral the other day which is billed as the first Gothic Cathedral, and Chartres is supposed to be the best example of a Gothic Cathedral. Chartres still has its’ original stained glass as during both wars they removed it and stored it safely. During WWII the cathedral was in danger as the allies moved towards Paris, but an American Colonel successfully negotiated with a German General to declare Chartres an open city, so there was no battle fought for the city.
The exterior of the Chartres Cathedral. Note the contrast between the recenly cleaned upper part, and the uncleaned lower part. The maintenance of these buildings is daunting.
On our way out of Chinon we decided we wanted to visit a winery, we drove thru the countryside only to find it was closed. Disappointed again, we wrote off getting a taste of any Chinon wine, but on our way out of town Ton spotted the new tasting room for the winery we had driven out into the country to see. Pierre and Bertrand Couly had opened a new tasting room on the highway to Chartres, Chinon Red wines are what we call Cabernet Franc in the US. We spoke to the wife of the owner and she did a great job explaining the wines of the area. She was aware of Oregon wines as her husband had spent some time at Sokol Blosser winery in Oregon in the 1980’s.
The very fine winery Pierre & Bertrand Couly. As the owner said you do not have to have an old facility to make traditional wines.
The three hour drive to Chartres was uneventful as the “N” road that we used most of the way was quite good. We parked in a free overnight spot, and walked about a mile into town to see the cathedral. The cathedral was indeed impressive, and the interior stain glass windows were among the best we have seen in France. The cathedral was constructed in the early 1200’s after the previous Romanesque Cathedral had burned. The cathedral is deservedly a UNESCO world heritage site. Besides admiring the beauty of the building we also again discussed the maintenance of these immense buildings. Just keeping the exterior clean is a full time job.
One of the stain glass “Roses” at Chartres, this one dates from around 1210 and is the original glass.
After touring the cathedral we decided not to wait for the light show, so we walked back to François. Frankly we were a little peeved with one of the attendants who would not let us take the last crypt tour, and did it in a way that seemed unnecessarily officious to us while simultaneously refusing to speak English, even though we had just heard him giving an explanation of the tour in perfect English to another person. I hope he was just having a bad day. We had a light dinner and a relatively early night as we have a long drive to Normandy tomorrow.
Well, plans change. We had originally planned to go to Orleans for the day, but last night we discussed spending a few days in the Loire Valley. When we woke up it was spitting rain and a little windy, The Weather Channel said it was going to improve as the day went on so we decided to skip Orleans, and head to Chateau de Chambord.
Ron plugged a GPS coordinate into the Garmin which was supposed to be for the motorhome parking at the Chateau and we took off. The Garmin said it was only a 68km drive, and the roads were good. Right at the end we started to think something was amiss as we suddenly started to get on smaller and smaller roads and this is maybe the largest tourist attraction in the Loire Valley. At the end the GPS proudly announced we had arrived, but we were looking at a field next to a little village. Either Ron inputted the coordinates wrong or the coordinates were wrong in the app we use to find places to stay. Anyway after a little more research we were on our way to the Chateau.
Thirty minutes later we arrived and what a first impression. The chateau is magnificent in scale. As we walked up to the entrance Ton said that this must cost a fortune to maintain. This would become a theme of the day.
The first view of the Chateau, it really is immense.
The Chateau was originally constructed from 1519 to 1547 by King François I. It is built in the Renaissance style and has 11 towers on the roof that are supposed to look like Istanbul.
The back of the Chateau. The roof was supposed to be modeled on the skyline of Constantinople (now Istanbul).
While it is really something to look at it is indeed difficult to maintain. When you watch the movie of the history of the Chateau it goes something like this, François builds it, and then loses interest in it and it deteriorates, another king gives it to someone who spends a fortune on it and then loses interest and it deteriorates, it passes to another owner who spends a fortune etc. In fact it may be the greatest white elephant in France.
The ceiling on the third floor, the salamander was the symbol of François I.
It is now maintained by the French National Park Service and they are clearly spending a fortune to restore and maintain it. Hopefully they will succeed as it is worth keeping.
It was time to get moving. Last night with some encouragement from Robyn we decided to head to Normandy. Orleans seemed like a good first leg for the trip. The first few days of the trip the weather had been perfect, but when we woke this morning it was just starting to rain. It pretty much rained the whole way to Orleans though the roads were good and pretty stress free.
Our first stop was the aire which is about 5km from the city center. When we got there the weather was still pretty unsettled so we decided that Orleans could wait for tomorrow and settled in. The one thing interesting was the aire shared its space with the local pétanque club which is the French version of Bocci. Unlike other pétanque games we had watched, this group was really good.
The view from the aire tonight.
In the evening we decided to take a stroll on the footpath along the River Loire. Not expecting much we were surprised when around a bend in the river about 200 yards from the campground there was a really nice church. Exploring a little further we came into a little village with a park on the grounds of an old Chateau. It was an unexpected find for us.
We are finally having to focus more on direction than interesting places. We picked the destination of Tournon-sur-Rhone based on it being a good distance north towards Sens.
When we arrived in Tournon we were not initially impressed. It was a nice enough town with a nice view of the Rhone River. There were two river cruise boats docked near town. We learned that Tournon had a sister city on the other side of the river called Hermitage. They were connected by a nice wooden pedestrian bridge.
The wooden bridge across the Rhone between Tournon and Hermitage.
We found another aire for the night and headed into town. We did a pass thru Tournon and it was nice, and then headed over to Hermitage as Ton wanted to get some pictures of the Rhone and the river cruise boats. Once we reached Hermitage we saw they had a chocolate museum. The chocolate museum was really awesome. It is called Valrhona, and is attached to a factory by the same name. We decided not to take the tour, but just went thru the attached store. The store had all you could eat samples of all of their chocolates. Ron probably ate about 5€ worth of samples, and Ton about 4€ worth. The chocolate was excellent, and we were almost tempted to buy some but we were full from our free samples!
One of the river cruise ships pulling away from the dock in Hermitage.
On the way back we saw some vineyards on the Tournon side of the river that were really interesting looking. They were on this incredible slope of about 15 degrees with old stone walls between parcels. We decided to walk over to get a better view. They were even more impressive up close. It turns out that this is a Grand Cru ( the highest quality wine in France) for Syrah, and is considered the spiritual birth place for Syrah. So we are going to look for a bottle of the local stuff tomorrow to check it out.
The hills above Tournan which are supposed to be the spiritual home of the Syrah grape.
