Dieppe, La Mailleraye-sur-Seine & La Suze-sur-Sarthe.

Monday 13th October.

We are parked up this afternoon next to the harbour in Dieppe. We arrived here after a wet and windy drive from Calais and now at 5.30pm we have a little sunshine, not much, enough to make a sailor's apron Phil says but it's sunshine nonetheless. We slept little last night, being kept awake by torrential rain in Folkestone which, inevitably, found a couple of leaks in the van. It's irritating because one of them is from a rooflight that I paid a garage in England to repair earlier in the year. The other one is from the big window above the cabin. The problem is that the roof is pretty inaccessible without climbing out through the main rooflight and doing that stresses the seal between the roof and the fitting. I'll have to wait until we are parked up on a dry day next to a wall or ramp high enough to climb on to the roof. Or rent a scaffold tower maybe. Or maybe not.

We stopped at this spot on our way back from our last trip and it was pretty crowded then with folk travelling onwards into France and beyond and other people returning from their travels. I suspect most people here now are heading south. There are also a lot more UK motorhomes here this time and fewer dogs (less dogs?). The plan for the next few days involves us heading slowly south via Le Mans, Saumur and Poitiers with a mix of camping car stops and vineyards. We stopped on the way here today at Carrefour for some essential shopping; bread, wine and diesel (€1.25/L) so we have enough wine now until we hit our first vineyard in a couple of days,enough diesel to get us to the south of France and tomorrow morning the bread van arrives. Happy days.

Wednesday 15th October.

This is all a bit déjà vu at the moment, albeit in reverse. We are parked up this afternoon at La Suze on the river Sarthe, last night we were parked up on the Seine, both places we stopped at six weeks or so ago on our way home. They are both nice places to stay though especially here at La Suze where we have all the facilities we need including electricity for €5 (£4) per night and can watch the sun glinting on the river a few metres from the front of the van, a bargain. Weather is a bit mixed at the moment, the mornings have been dim and dismal followed by rain and then sunshine in the afternoon. The van that I lovingly washed, polished and then polished again looks filthy already, grrrr.

Oh, Phil has just taken a bag of rubbish to the wheely bin and as she chucked it in a rat ("AS BIG AS A CAT"- she said) jumped out and scurried into the bushes. I guess this is what happens when you don't replace the missing lids of the wheely bins?

No pictures today, a combination of new iPhone, new iPad, a recalcitrant blogging platform and dodgy WiFi are all conspiring against me but fear not, we'll be back to normal soon.

Pat

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