Cathy posting;

Friday 30^th March – Good Friday

So it’s confession time, Dave has realised that his Sat Naff has 2 settings one is DMS -degrees, minutes and seconds and the other one is DD- Decimal Degrees! It was pure luck that we ended up at our first Aire in Ypres at all! Apologies to the Aires book you were right, our bad! (please see yesterdays post!)

So last night, Thursday we were parked up at the edge of the canal at Landrecies, it’s a small Aire for just 4 vans, there are no services but it’s a pleasant spot and it’s free! 3 other vans arrived later in the evening so all spaces were full.

Canal side at Landrecies

Next morning, Good Friday we noticed there had been a resurrection! All the other vans had gone, and we were up quite early… after healthy breakfast of porridge we had a nice walk along the canal about 9.30 am for 2.5 miles, I’m planning on keeping a track of miles walked on this whole trip and just need to download a walking app.

We set off about 11am to head for Rozoy Sur Serre in Hautes de France – Northern France (N50°07.668′, E003°41.452) The site is lovely just 4 spaces again but this time fresh water and waste disposal, extremely quiet and landscaped, it seems quite new too and there is only us here for now.

The Aire is near a little village Parfondeval, listed in UNESCO heritage as one of many beautiful villages, we parked up and had some French bread and coffee.

French bread, English tea, Italian coffee, a very European breakfast

We decided to walk to the village 4.5 kms away, even though it seemed to be alongside the road, however it started to rain quite heavily so we decided to drive, I get a bit stressed about driving into small villages with a big van but I need not have worried as it was empty like a ghost town not a soul about, no patisserie, no boulangerie in fact nothing at all, no winter flowers, it was described as incredibly beautiful well apart from a couple of nice cottages and a particularly old timber framed one I’m afraid I wasn’t impressed, maybe the heavy rain didn’t help but I won’t be coming back, sorry UNESCO.

Free Aire at Rozoy Sur Serre

We went back to the Aire and as it didn’t stop raining we settled in for the afternoon, I am reading a book called In Europe by Geert Mak, it’s a sort of biography and travel journal, he set off from his home of Amsterdam in 1999 to criss cross Europe tracing 20^th century history as it slipped into the 21^st, I’m only a few chapters in but I’m enjoying his style already.

Cathy in the library

It is time for tea now, chicken a la grecque we bought yesterday and tinned potatoes, well  guess what we left at home? you guessed it, yes the tin opener! never mind Dave to the rescue.

Good job he bought the leatherman tool along!

Dave has been making a note of all the places that we’ve been to and as we go he will record them for future reference and fellow travellers, whilst also keeping a copy of all our spending daily, weekly and monthly to make sure we stay on budget.

Off to bed early as were up early for Champagne region tomorrow.

Cathy