Alsace Wine Tour 2023 – Bonny sur Loire to Grève de Loire
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Hymer route from Bonny sur Loire to Grève de Loire
Today we are moving on from Bonny sur Loire, the day begins with the promise of another very hot day, we breakfast outside along with most of or (very well-spaced) neighbours) under the trees.
The cool and green and shady space is much appreciated and enjoyed, knowing that the heat is coming. Walking into the town we feel the heat already rising. St Aignan’s church at Bonny sur Loire is now open so we spend about an hour enjoying the calm and peaceful space. St Aignan’s is a large church with a high vaulted roof of stone, pink and cream tiled floor, and about 40 rows of simple oak-wood pews. Like its sister church at Chartres it has some beautiful stained glass windows depicted scenes from (mostly) New Testament bible stories.
We leave this lovely church and walk back to our Hymer, then negotiate the narrow entrance/exit road. The exit made much more difficult by the ‘Give Way’ sign positioned where the side road meets the narrow road through the town. We don’t quite make it round the corner and have a lightly scraped mark along the sun canopy awning to show for it! Next time leave by the one-way road even though it means traversing it in the wrong direction!
We leave Bonny sur Loire at about 10.00am on D2007, turning onto D50 we cross the Loire on the magnificent suspension bridge with brick towers at Châtillon sur Loire. We avoid Orléans by taking D51, a minor cross-country road through the lovely rural France. The fields of golden cereal, sunflowers and lavender are magnificent, broken only by the villages of Coullons, Cerdon, Isdes to Vannes sur Cosson. Then D13 through Marcilly en Villette, D18/D19 through Jouy le Potier to Meung sur Loire. This was a wonderful afternoon or rolling along the country roads and enjoying rural France at its best.
The Aire at Meung is small, only nine places and not surprisingly (after our experience yesterday at Briare) all nine spaces are taken, It is disappointing as it has been a long drive but… the aire de camping cars is small, cramped and not particularly beautiful! After a short rest and lunch at about 1.30pm we press on again to Beaugency. Following the Loire along its meandering route on D912 we pass through Mer, the town of Blois to Grève de Loire Municipal Campsite just outside Chaumont sur Loire arriving about 3.00pm.
This large expanse of riverside ground is access by driving underneath the bridge at Chaumont. It is a municipal campsite and therefore more wild and natural ground (undulating and tussocky) and not flat, green and ‘manicured’! We take about 30- 40 minutes of faffing around, finding a spot near the river, under trees (and there are plenty) and reasonably level. Alan is getting cross and irritated, not surprising after a long day of driving then moving from place to place in the campsite. We finally settle on a space at the very furthest end of the campsite (possibly 0.4km from the entrance), under trees and by the river we find a good spot, mostly level with wedges, tussocky and sandy but with the large mat outside the door it is quite acceptable.
It is about 4.00pm by this time and we are ready for a rest. After exploring our surroundings, checking out the facilities (showers, toilets, washing up area and laundry… all fairly basic) we sit down and watch our fellow campers arrive and go through the same ridiculous performance as we did to find a spot that is ‘suitable’ and meets their needs and level-ish.
We open wine and do a lot of chuckling as we watch several more arrivals. A bottle of wine and a plate of chicken salad and we are quite sated. Sitting out into the late evening we do not notice the arrival of mosquitoes, not until morning when Alan notices those tell-tale red spots! Later note: Those really were painful, troublesome insect bites, much worse than I have experienced previously.
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