We’ve been on the road for just over a week now, so here’s a little update  – how we beat Black Saturday, our first visitor and our own toilet!

Black Saturday dawned bright and blue and we were completely unaware until the day before that the day we had picked to start our grand tour, was the same day that the rest of Europe always picks to start their two weeks in the sun. Leave in the afternoon and you will be fine (probably), was the advice we were given, and it was academic anyway. Despite being up with the lark, the flat still needed to be cleaned and then Charlie needed to be packed.

Have you heard the expression – squeezing a quart into a pint pot? It is our daily task. We have tried to pack the minimum, but even just with Chubby, our clothes bags and food provisions, we still have to wrestle it in every day. Have we brought too much gear – inevitably? Do we need it all right now – of course!

Can we fit it all in – yes we can!

So by mid afternoon, we were ready to go and “put some miles between us and Amsterdam”. Charlie ate up the road all the way to Dinant in Belgium; our advice was good and we saw no sign of the holiday exodus – so there’s tip number one, never leave in a hurry!  We swapped the lowlands of the Netherlands for the craggy outcrops of Belgium’s premier climbing region, chugging slowly between the towering rocky pillars that greet you at the entrance.

Quite the arrival

Day two, country three as we crossed over into France. We’ve travelled diagonally across France from Dinant to Bordeaux, with a few stops along the way. It’s not meant to be fast, but we did not expect it to be this slow either. The GPS is programmed to avoid motorways, which has brought us through countless delightful villages and towns – all at 50 km per hour!

vive la France ancienne

Wine as far as the eye can see

A few days ago we were calculating how long to travel 250km:  “I reckon three and a half to four hours,” I said. “Time was I would have said about an hour and a half,” was Geoff reply, with fond memories of a Ducati motorbike with an engine as third as big again as Charlie’s!

But we are now based in Bordeaux for a few days – staying first at the house of old family friends – Charles, Linda, Katie, Isobel, Fudge the dog and Ben the giant ginger cat – and now camping out in their soon(ish) to be summer house.

I’m not naughty at all!

They can just chat away – I’ll sit over here

Barbecue at the building site

There are walls and a roof, but the rest is a building site. It is in a gorgeous village by the sea and as Geoff says “we’ve scored our own toilet and a fridge”. What more does any one want!