Steve and Viv Wayfarer Greek Odyssey

Monday 9^th September

Set off from home and had a steady drive down to Newhaven and spotted a few Red Kites and Buzzards, nearly had a fit when we filled the tank up from almost empty to full 63.5 litres at £92-00! The van speedo says it will do 120mph but I reckon that would be loaded over a cliff as it seems to cruise around the 50mph. There was a long jam on the M25 that took a while to clear but it looks like the van will do around 520 miles to the tank full.

Caught the ferry without any problems and caught a few hours cat napping until we docked at 4:00am, drove for about an hour until we spotted a nice quite little lay-by where we pulled in and camped the night about 12 miles out of Dieppe having failed to find the Aires listed in the guide we had gone to so much trouble to borrow before leaving.

Tuesday 10^th September

Moved off around 10:00am and headed generally south and found ourselves in a little place called Pont-de-l’Arche where we dined on Escalope de Dindon a la Normandie (turkey with creamed mushroom sauce for those that don’t speak French). Revised our destination over lunch and picked somewhere closer to hand and arrived at Le Noyer en Oche at 5:00pm. A very quite Cider Farm, just us and a couple from Belgium with a very big dog called Hubert. The farmer and his wife seem very nice and chatted for about a quarter of an hour mainly in French and seemed to understand what I was saying or at least were too polite to say otherwise.

As it is such a lovely little spot, a typical Normandy Farm with wood and wattle walls, cider apple trees and cattle all around we will probably stop another night and explore the local villages and country side on our bikes tomorrow having travelled 319 miles in the past 36 hours.

Wednesday 11^th September

Not sure if my French is quite as up to speed as I thought, I was asking Madame Lesur about water and the rubbish bin and she was chatting back about her carrots in the garden, she showed me the water but not sure she would want me to throw the rubbish on her vegetables though.

Quiet day reading and cycling into Beaumesnil, Viv looked around a very impressive Louis XIII Chateau whilst I cycled 18 km to the next town to go shopping for dinner.

As we were having breakfast we had a lovely close view of a Common Buzzard chasing a Honey Buzzard over the orchard.

Thursday 12^th September

Said goodbye to Mdm Lesur and set off towards Tours, it was interesting the way the country side changed from Cider orchards and cows to more arable and as we got further south fields of Sunflowers and Vineyards. It was a shame the sunflowers had all gone passed their best as they would have been a beautiful sight if in full bloom.

We spent the night on a little vineyard, Caves du Pere Auguste who make their own appleation controlle wine, we sampled a bottle of Gamay red and nice it was too after cycling down to the river and along to the next village.