Gill has a bad night and do not sleep well. She is awake for about 3 hours but the bonus is: she hears a tawny owl hooting its tremulous woooo-ooooo in the woods; it is a really clear sky and  the stars through the ceiling windows but Gill does not see the meteor shower or any shooting stars. At 02.35 a car in the car park leaves, at 03.05 it returns and Gill wonder where the two men have been to!

A slow start to the day follows. It is a fabulous clear morning and we enjoy the view of the lake and the village through the long yellow grass as we eat breakfast, but it soon clouds over. By 9.00am there is not much blue sky left.

Alan dashes out with a plastic tray to pick the cherry plums from the nearby tree. The cherry plums are covered in a lovely blue bloom and I have 480 grams, slightly more than the recipe for cherry plum gin calls for. They will lose some weight by evaporation so it will not really matter. [Later note: They did lose weight and were mixed with a few sloes from another stop in France. The finished plum sloe gin is excellent and joins the collection dating from 2015.]

Various sloe and damson gins from our travels

We get on our way about 10.00, quite early for us, from Maurepas we take the D13 through Tremblay, a very narrow but pretty village then D14 through rural France to N12. We stay on this through Dreux and marvel at the acres and acres of wheat and cereal fields, now mostly harvested, but the straw and straw bales remain. There are a number of grain stores where there are literally tons of wheat and barley grain stored for processing, it reminds us of Canada and the endless prairies. Perhaps we don’t associate France with such huge open cereal cultivation spaces. At Verneuil we keep our route west on the D926 towards D’Aigle but stop at a small Aire outside the Maire at Chandrai for a lunch stop. This aire is hidden away and has excellent disposal facilities.

We swap drivers and Gill drive the next section on D13 from D’Aigle where we fill up with diesel from E. Leclerc (the cheapest diesel in France!). The D13 is a fairly narrow road that weaves its way through rural France again through cereal and sunflower fields. It is quite relaxing, through Gacé and Trun, where there are amazing fields of sunflower.

We arrive at Falaise about 3.00pm and park on the long car park at the foot of Chateau Falaise, the birthplace and home of William the Conqueror. There are about a dozen campers parked already here and about 100 cars. We are all parked on the grass, can you imagine English Heritage allowing people to park for free and stay overnight? The sunshine of the morning has gone to be replaced with short squally showers. We walk to the Maire and get caught it a heavy rain shower so hurry to the church of the Trinity opposite the castle and shelter from the rain. We call in at the Tourist Information and walk up the hill to the castle outer walls. We explore the outer walls, the enclosure for the old cité and the shop. There is still a very long queue of people waiting to book tickets to go into the castle. We decide to come back early tomorrow morning when it will be less busy as there is a lot to see. France seems much more open to people exploring and enjoying historic sites than the UK. Here are Falaise the whole of the interior of the castle walls are accessible without payment, it is only if you want to go inside that you pay. That’s where we go tomorrow, to an amazing interior, well worth paying for.

Back to the Hymer, just in time before a torrential downpour, make chicken stir-fry and have a quiet evening in.