Europe, the Final Front and Rear..
These are the never-ending voyages of the Flying-Brick ‘Gnome’. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope...
Chapter 9: Loches Pt 1.
After yesterday's slightly depressing blog (you know, covid 'n stuff) several of you have put in official complaints, so I need to make this chapter more upbeat. Hmmm... Nothing about viruses, nothing about imbecilic government leaders, nothing about impoverishing an entire nation. Um...
Well, I could talk about the amazing things we saw on our trip north through France. How would that do? The whole trip was wrapped in stress, so stopping off in various 'places of interest' was actually a good way of us ignoring the realities of life, and going to the Loire Valley was one good example. With more to come.
Visiting the Loire Valley has always been high up on my Bucket List. Yes, it's true, I have a list of buckets. I wanted to see if this region lived up to all its hype, and look towards planning a future gnome-trek here to visit more sites in more detail.
We had only just arrived in the area when we came across Loches. I had never heard of it before, but then my knowledge of France is not exactly world-renowned, and, let's be fair, they have probably never heard of me either.
It turned out to be a beautiful fortified citadel town, unfortunately hidden by the encroaching gloom. A gloom driven by gathering clouds, the coming night and by the news. (Uh-oh, stay with the story Phil...)
We stopped near the centre of town, next to its huge outer ramparts. Although, disappointingly few parts of rams could actually be seen.
It was, by that time, too late to visit the town's central chateau, and its giant walls prevented us from getting much of a view. This photo is all we could see of St Ours church, an impressive romanesque building unfortunately mostly covered with impressive non-romanesque tarpaulin.
We decided to rest the gnome for the night so went in search of a gnome-home.
We settled for staying overnight in a small parking area put aside for camper-vans. These no-fee areas are to be found all over France, although some are better placed than others, as we shall find out in future much-anticipated chapters. This turned out to be a peaceful site next to a canal. For us it was simply somewhere to eat, drink and sleep, ready for another hectic day.
These sites usually have few if any facilities. Which brings us to one gnome-deficient problem. It's small exterior size has many advantages, plus its four wheel drive powerful motor can get us pretty much anywhere. Being magically bigger on its inside than on its outside makes for an incredible machine, but its inner hugeness is not enough to allow separate toilet facilities. When researching this vehicle it was remarkably difficult to find any reference to how you take a leak in the middle of the night. And you will probably be relieved (pun intended) to hear that I'll not go into details here either...
Meanwhile...
The Elf still had no results to her covid test, despite all the moon-shot promises made by King Boris. Hopefully 'no news is good news', although 'no virus' would have been better news. Due to these worries and more, it took me at least ten minutes to get to sleep...
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