2025 September: Bagneaux-sur-Loing to Blèneau
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The day dawns sunny but cool (12°C), we are up for breakfast and a shower here on the commercial campsite at Bagneaux-sur-Loing. We plan our journey for the day, service Hymer and are ready to leave when a Welsh couple with a caravan and very large upmarket car ask Mr C. if he has a tyre pressure gauge (of course he does).
He finds the tyre pressure gauge while they describe how a garage had told them the tyre pressure on their car were too low and pumped them up to 60psi, their handbook said 38-40 psi. Mr C. shows him how to read the gauge, releasing air from the first tyre and resetting it at 40psi. The man takes the gauge and repeats the process with each of the other three tyres. It takes almost an hour. The couple apologise for the delay but are so grateful that someone was willing to help (an angel with a tyre pressure gauge… the first but not the only angel this trip). It is important to help each other when travelling. We leave La Riviere Dorée at midday taking D40/D607 to Souppes sur Loing and A77 (paeage) from here:
Payment problems at the Paeage
We stop at the pay station barrier for the paeage, using first our Irish credit card (because the account is in Euro) to pay €8.90 tariff but that is rejected. Next the Bank of Ireland debit card in euros and that is refused (both were used without problem yesterday). By this time a very irate French man behind is honking his horn with impatience. Mr C. calls for assistance on the barrier… that is no help as it just keeps telling him to use another card to pay (we have)! The only other option is cash. I get my purse and hand over a €10 note, No… says Mr C. it has to be coins (9 x €1 coins).
Most people would not have them, but I keep a stack of my own! By this time the irate Frenchman behind is beside himself with impatience… leaning on his horn and… there is a queue forming nicely behind us! What else can we do… get them all to back up, I doubt they would be very pleased! In England the driver behind would have come to help a non-local speaking person, obviously not this irate Frenchman. Laboriously, one-by-one the euro coins are fed slowly into the machine (Frenchman still honking on his horn). At last, the barrier rises! To add insult to injury, about 5-minutes later as the Frenchman overtakes us, he leans long and hard on his horn pulling away fast drawing a trailer behind with a very up-market Lamborghini on it. Obviously, an impatient spoilt brat who is used to getting his own way.
Our nerves stop jangling and we have an uneventful journey for the 70km on the paeage, coming off at Boismorand and taking D40 and then N7 to Bussiére and then D43 through Adon to Rogny sur Loing and the 7-rise locks. It is now 1.30 pm, so we park on the car park and have lunch. We have come here to visit the staircase of 7 locks. The locks are no longer in use, they were replaced by a longer route that saved water. Water supply at the highest point was always a problem for canals because each barge that ascended needed a lock full of water to lift it.
After lunch we walk across the road to the locks: les Sept Écluses (no longer functioning as a tunnel now bypasses the locks). We spend a relaxing afternoon walking to the top of the seven rises, what a piece of engineering, completed in the early 19th century. We cross the canal and explore the lovely village and surrounding watery gardens and parkland around the river, we also find an overnight parking Aire next to the canal. There are four spaces with a water supply and good emptying facilities across the road, and while it is a lovely location as a stopover we decide not to, but find a campsite in a more secluded spot. Taking D90 from Rogny we drive the 7km to Bleneau and find the refurbished Camping-car Park site behind the Piscine. One of our goals on this trek was to try the Camping-Car Park network of sites, we had attempted to stay at a Camping-Car Park site in the past but were put off by the high membership and other costs. Since then the requirements of Camping-Car Park have changed so we decided to give it a trial.
The Camping-Car Park site we picked is a wonderful old site (c.1970) with about 100 very large pitches, a former municipal campsite, divided by hedges and a community centre in the middle, all sheltered under many mature trees. It has seen better days but it is back in business again since it was taken over by Camping-Car Park and benefitted from a €125,000 refurbishment funded by various tourist organisation. The site here at Blèneau now has a new super shower/WC facilities block and service area. It just needs using and some tender loving care
Later the sun comes out and we explore, meeting a Dutch couple at the gate entering with a Hymer we stop to chat: they speak only Dutch and we speak English… interesting but quite possible especially with the help of Google Translate. They tell us they are 88 and 86 years old, we tell them they are ten years older than us and we hope we are still travelling as they are in ten years’ time. A French couple on the pitch next to us are also very friendly, again we converse, they in French and we in English… perfectly possible and with actions some very funny moments.
Back at Hymer we set up our table and chairs and relax with our aperitif of Crémant fizz and salmon rillette with baguette. I get the beefburgers out to cook them for tea with fried tomatoes and find there is only one (thick) one in the pack and not two! Later we sit among the huge hornbeam trees, their bunches of V-shaped seed pairs (rather like sycamore) swaying gently above us lulling us into a sense of peace and security, despite today being a very stressful day!
Motorhome Trek Bagneaux-sur-Loing to Blèneau
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