Troyes (20 Nov)

We found a good place to park and walked into the centre of the 'old quarter'.  Troyes is a massive city but the medieval section is quite contained and full of half timbered houses and Gothic buildings and said to be one of the best places in France to get a sense of what Europe looked like when when Moliere was penning his finest plays and the Three Musketeers were swashbuckling.

(I'm in a rush now so it's down to 'one liners')

Quirky....

Sultry....

Cosmopolitan

Leaning....

Really?

Knockers!

A 'live' foon!

I'm here somewhere!

Narrow...

Cute....

Chablis and Abbaye de Pontigny (20 Nov)

We wrapped up warm and walked into the old centre of Chablis before setting off for Avize (for the champagne).  It was really cold but at least dry and (a bit) clearer.  The town is another classic French town with plenty of interesting old buildings………..

Settlement of the foundations?

"This is MY town"

Nice entrance gate to the town

How about this for a few crazy angles!

Then we popped in to see Abbaye de Pontigny which is a few miles North of Chablis and was indeed the place where the 'Chablis Wine' was developed by the monks (they certainly had a taste for the good life those monks!).  The Abby was built about 800 years ago and Saint Edmund, the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1233, is buried here (you didn't know that did you?)

The 'front'

The 'back'

The 'inside' is even bigger than it looks actually

Cloisters

One of the side buildings

Did I mention the fog too !! ??

We drove 100 miles today in the fog!  On the way to Vezelay we pulled in to 2 Aires for water etc only to find that they both had their water systems turned off for winter!  When we arrived in Vezelay it was cold and rainy so to be honest we couldn't work up the enthusiasm to get out and look around.  We then decided to give Noyers-sur -Serein a miss and drive directly to Chablis to another Aire (here right now) to discover a sign on the water services.........'water cut off' (!)

Oh well, we still have half a tank of fresh water so OK for a few more days..........

The plan now is to have a butchers around Chablis in the morning then drive towards Epernay (Avize) ready for sampling the champagne houses on Thursday :)

This weather is seriously curtailing our adventure so we are definitely making our way home.  We will see what we can of the remaining (planned) agenda depending on the weather on the day...........

So probably back by Friday! (only joking.....hehe)........although it does look as if we will be back in the UK by the following Friday.

Hmm. need another glass of Bordeaux now....... hic!

Rain and Cold

Over the last week the weather has become more like Autumn and now seems to be more like winter.  This is of course hardly surprising as it is the 19th November and we are further North in the centre of France.

The main problem is that the shorter days and colder (wetter?) weather have a marked impact on what we can do during the daytime. 

If the weather is dry then walking is fine, but if it's raining (like today), well, you know……..

As for cycling, this requires dry days that are not too cold (like today and the rest of this week!) because the wind chill effect when the outside temperature is below 5 degrees centigrade is just too much to want to spend more that 30 minutes on a bike!

This situation was always a consideration and was the reason why we originally intended to go further South (Spain) to stay warm.  

So it seems that our 'French touring' days are numbered and we are making our way back to Blighty a little bit sooner that intended.  There are a few places that we wish to see on the way home, including Vezelay, Noyers-sur-Serein, Chablis, Troyes, Epernay, Reims, Arras, Vimy Ridge, Lille, Ypres and Dunkirk (oh and maybe Bruges in  Belgium if we get reckless!).

So there we Blogletts, you may see us sooner than later!

Monday 18th Nov

Not much to add really.  We drove to Larochemillay which is in the Parc Natural du Morvan to be ready for visiting Bibracte today which is the remains of a huge Celtic settlement that is being unearthed by archaeologists.

On the way we dropped in to Carrefour and restocked the pantry for another 6 days.  I did give in to Kate and bought some Moules (I have an 'estranged' relationship with mussels) which as it happens we (she) cooked with white wine and we ate with a fresh baguette……….. they were actually yummy! (must be coz we're in France I s'pose)

Vichy (after the water fiasco)

Well we got so Vichy in the end and parked up in the Aire which was about 2 miles North of the city.  After a spot of late lunch we decided to cycle into Vichy for a look around.  I should add that it was really quite foggy and very cold at this time and deprived of my ability to navigate by the sun and stubborn refusal to use the GPS of we went……………

45 mins and 6 miles later…………… we got there! (sorry Kate)

Vichy looked quite genteel and one could see that in it's heyday it was indeed a 'Belle Epoque' spa town.  However we were cold, the weather was still foggy, it was getting late, and we didn't feel too inclined to sight see much more so we cycled back to the van.  The way back although shorter was all uphill and so cold that each intake of breath felt that it was burning the back of our throats………..

17:00………back in the van, kettle on, time for tea!

The only photo we managed to take in Vichy! (haha)

I could see my son in one of these wacky French micro cars!

How about the convertable Lewis? you'd managed to fit with the roof off!

Sunday 17th Nov (REALLY COLD)

Last night it got cold, really cold.  We had (optimistically) turned off the heating as usual at bed time and at 04:00 in the morning my head was so cold I got up to put a wooly hat on!  I checked the temperature outside and found it to be minus 4 degrees centigrade…………….back to bed then!

However………. at around 06:00 in the morning I heard a 'clunk' and the sound of water dropping to the ground from the van! (lots of water)…….. This turned out to be the heating boiler frost protection safety mechanism automatically operating and dumping it contents (10 litres of water) just before it freezes!

I checked the inside temperature of the van to discover that it was 1 degree centigrade! or to use a more technical term……BLOODY FREEZING!

Anyway……nothing I could do right then about it so back to bed……

Now it turns out that the air heating can still be used when the water boiler is empty but the boiler safety mechanism can not be reset (and the boiler refilled) until the temperature gets above 7 degrees centigrade (we were still minus 4!).  Also the cold water system had frozen so we had no fresh water that we could use either!

So we set off in the direction of Vichy trusting the weather forecast to be accurate when they said daytime temperature later of 10 degrees centigrade.

On the way there we found an Aire that had water on tap so pulled in and Katy started filling the main water tank with the watering can 10 litres at a time whilst I made some fresh coffee………….I checked the 'cold' tap and it was working now.  I also ran the pump a little to help clear the pipes of any remaining ice, Katy heard this and said that water was coming out of the dump valve under the van (which we kept open to avoid freezing up).  I said not to worry as I had only drawn 4 or 5 litres or so………

10 minutes later when a German van pulled in to get fresh water it was while 'communicating' to him that we would only be another 2 or 3 minutes that I noticed the water that we thought was coming from the waste water holding tank was actually coming from the boiler safety vent pipe!  This meant that all the water that Katy had spent the last 10 minutes putting in one side of the van………was coming out the other side!!!!

Ah well, to cut the (already too long) story short, we managed to reset the boiler even thought the temperature at this time was only 4 degrees and spend another 10 minutes refilling the main water tank and the boiler tank………….all's well that ends well !