2018-04-12 Northern Italy and Southern France Sancoins to Chateaudun

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Northern Italy and Southern France Sancoins to Chateaudun

Northern Italy and Southern France by Hymer Motorhome

Sancoins to Chateaudun

It is surprisingly quiet, the crows that were so noisy last night are silent. Looking at my journal I see that this is day 24 of our adventure, we are both exhausted, sometimes I don’t know what day it is. My ability to speak French has reduced, why should that be when I am getting practise every day? I put it down to mental exhaustion, we pack so much into each day, maybe we should fade into old age gracefully and not push ourselves to the limit! I don’t thing so, I pull on some clothes and despite the rain walk into the town to purchase bread from the traditional bakery. It is still raining heavily when I return. We breakfast and look at the grey water of the canal with rain circles and the rooks sitting dejectedly in the trees.

We leave about 10.00am and have difficulty leaving Sancoins because a road is closed with roadworks. We eventually get onto the D12 after about 25 minutes of driving around in circles! Through the village of Chateau sur Allier (the wrong direction) and onto the N7 and then A77 towards Sancere mostly in pouring rain. Here we come off the motorway and have lunch at the Services at Les Vignobles. Then, with the intention of following the Loire wine route through Pouilly Fume and Sancere wineries, we find that the main road through Sancere is closed and diversions take us about 5 km in the opposite direction. After about 30 minutes of driving around in circles, we abandon that idea and get back on the A77, driving north again through Cosne Cours sur Loire and the D907/D952 to Gien. From here, the D952 to Chateauneuf sur Loire and D2060 to Orleans.

It is busy on the ring road around Orleans, but we drive on through Saran to the D955 which takes us to the small town of Chateaudun. We find the small (free) Aire du Camping-car with 9 places is full (there are ten campers packed close together in there) under the shadow of the Chateau. We drive on through the town and find Camping du Moulin á Tan, a camping site on the edge of the town. It is being refurbished, so the six of us park on the grass circle in front of the river and the water mill. The rain has finally stopped but the ground is very soft.

We are glad to stop, it has been a trying day… lots of rain, two road closures and much time wasted trying to negotiate the diversion route and very bland and uninteresting countryside! But we made good progress north having covered 263km.

We cook Charolais beef in dopiaza sauce and drink a bottle of Cava and everything feels much better.

Our Hymer motorhome trip to Northern Italy and Southern France

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Summary of motorhome journey – Sancoins to Chateaudun