The sun is out and so is the soup.

 The sun is out and so is the soup.

Yesterday was a day of travel heading for our rendezvous (see how I used French there) with Rachel later in the week. We had identified a tranquil little village called Séreilhac (I have absolutely no idea how to say that) with a motorhome rest spot by a small fishing lake and some park land. It is indeed a lovely spot. It is a bit chilly this morning but since the sun is rising it should quickly warm up a bit.

We knew that the place has all of the services and that here, there is a small charge (not for parking just for the water and electricity) but what we did not realise is that to access them requires tokens. Tokens that you can buy from the town hall. On a Sunday afternoon? Eh .... no. They have however thought of that and tokens can be bought out of town hall hours in the local tabacco shop .... but only when it is open. But it is open on a Sunday afternoon right? Eh ... no. Ok last desperate try at the local Bar ... also shut. It seems that this sleppy village has gone into something of a decline since the bypass was opened. Businesses are closing and the vilage declining. "Progress" always has a price to be paid by someone.

Anyway undaunted we soldier on conserving what is left of our water supply until the town hall opens. Let's hope that (a) Monday is not some local holiday (b) the town hall staff decide to come to work and (c) they still have tokens left. They certainly never ran out yesterday!

I had intended posting this picture from the previous journey. It was a big chair (well I guess that's stating the obvious) in the middle of a roundabout. I managed to zoom in to the red sign and see that it is 5m x 5 m and stands 10m high. For those still in feet and inches just call it 5 yards x 5 yards and 10 yards high. The difference between a yard and a metre is not significant in terms of large chairs in roundabouts. If any of my French speaking friends are reading this maybe you could zoom in too and let me know if there is any additional information readable to help explain why they need a big chair in the middle of a roundabout! If any of my American friends are reading then a metre is the same thing as a meter, it is a unit of length. Gosh it is so challenging writing when you have an international audience to cater for.

It is fair to say that we have travelled a lot in recent years and that we know to open the overhead lockers carefully because something might have moved during the flight. Well the Kayak too, has overhead lockers and occasionally when you open one you find yourself wearing your underwear on your head rather then where it was intended to be worn. But yesterday was a little different. We found a nice little layby at an appropriate time for lunch and Sheila had made a lovely pot of soup. Now the overhead locker warning should also be extended to fridge doors. You are one step ahead of me right? You know where I am going with this and what I am about to type. On opening the door the soup pot was the object which had moved during the flight and out she tumbled. Luckily, very luckily, the soup was (a) so thick that you could cut a slice off it and (b) chilled from being in the fridge that, although there was a mess, quite a big mess in fact, it was not nearly as bad as it might have been. In point of fact, enough of the soup stayed in the pot that we managed to salvage a reasonable (and very tasty) portion each. I told Sheila just to scrape the rest back into the pot but for some reason known only to her good self, she declined my suggestion. No soup picture. I thought that discretion was the better parrt of valour and decided not to take any pictures.

One of the roads along which we happily traversed had lots of books adorning the sides. Not real books and like the big chair, I'm not really sure why!

We crossed some water on a bridge

Finally, for now at least, I have a warning. We have trusted Waze for our sat nav needs for a long time and it has more or less always gotten us to where we needed to be. Usually the mistakes were mine. Since we started this journey we turned on the features "avoid toll roads" and "avoid motorways". I have to say it has mostly been a pleasure roving along the highways and byways pulling in occasionally to let a car or truck pass. Not a care in the world and in no particular hurry. This is what driving is supposed to be about. However in France the nice lady in Waze who has stuck with us in many different countries let us down a little. I am amazed how she knows all that stuff and who tells her about the cars that have stopped ahead etc but she knows. Anyway once again I digress a little. Today she told me to turn right so I dutifully turned right. The road began to narrow a little but we were not concerned. 

One of our Waze selected roads!

When it became pretty much single track we began to wonder if it was right. It seems that when you turn off the motorways function it will find the shortest route and it doesnt really care if you are driving a little car or a Kayak. After several of these inappropriate roads we turned the motorway function back on for the remainder of the day. Note to self - investigate other sat nav packages that allow more detail on the road choices and allow input of the vehicle type. OK that's all for now folks. Take care.