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Birthday Girl...


It was my birthday - as a treat I got the last yorkshire tea bag! And... the promise to play as much labyrinth as wanted 🤣🤣🤣 cheesy chips for tea... but first an hours drive to a recommended campsite...
We (literally) pitched up on a fab camping right on the river Loire... leafy foresty pretty empty... lovely afternoon chilling... gin and tonics.. birthday messages... cheesy chips and steak... we had been going to go out for a meal but France is shut on a Monday in September... fizzy wine fairy lights ..  Dr Fred trounced me at Labyrinth - we had a brief van disco....  didnt want to keep the other campers up.  
The following daywe went to have a look around the local town, Cosne sur Loire.  There was a wee booklet with a kind of walk of interesting places so we decided to follow that.  There some very nice buildings - It's obviously an old town and some of it was very old.  There were ruined bits of a castle, the equivalent to the Bishop's Palace in Bishop Auckland. There were  several churches - one had an amazing gothic vaulted ceiling.   There were a lot of very pretty very French like houses and in the middleof town a rather splendid art deco cinema. It was a nice walk but most things were closed... (tuesdays in France) and non of the bars looked particulary appealing.

So we headed back across the river - stopping to watch a local boules tournament and got back to base just as the weather turned... 

The rest of the evening was spent indoors - still mid twenties temp but windy and damp - it made quite a change. 

In the morning the weather was considerably cooler until the sun came out!!! We decided to move on - do a bit of sightseeing in the Loire valkey. I booked us tickets for a chateau and we headed for an overnight stop in a (free) very pleasant Aire which was only 20 minutes way from the Chateau. 

These Aires are very variable... some are silly prices given camping in France is so reasonable.  Some of them are just nasty carparks - we avoid those and then others like the one we stayed on that night are very pleasant... trees, clean, water provided, bins... trouble is you dont know until you get there. Tbf if we dont like it we leave. Theres a lot of choice for overnighting. 

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