Dave posting;

We left Mutigny this morning and headed towards Nancy in Eastern France, we will have an overnight stop at Verdun.

En-route we bought diesel at 1.36 euros and later stopped at a local boulangarie for a lunchtime baggette, time to try out my schoolboy French, whilst in the shop I bought  two cakes, after all it’s Easter Sunday and we don’t have any chocolate in the motorhome!

About 30 kms from Verdun we pull over and munch the lovely bagettes and cakes!

After a decent break we travel on and arrive at the free overnight site, it’s a designated spot at a factory but it’s like an Aire with no services. Verdun centre is 20 mins walk away and it seems very quite here inside the residential area of Verdun.

Clean sugared almond factory at Verdun – a free stopover

Pogo is parked  at Dragees Braquier, sugared almonds to me and you! a sugared almond small unit/factory and it’s the smartest, cleanest factory I’ve ever seen, there’s a shop attached to pop in buy their products, maybe we will go in later or tomorrow.

When we arrived there was a locked gate across the entrance, what are we going to do now? wait a minute Dave, Cathy says and reads the signs on the gates, it looks like we are the rear entrance for delivery vehicles! So we drive around the block and found the entrance on the other side! The signs direct us to the rear where there is marked out and designated space for 3 or 4 vans, we are the first here, so we choose our spot.

City Gate at Verdun

After a little rest we walk in to town it’s now about 5pm, over the bridge and through the city gates, we discover a museum tucked away and we spend an interesting 30 minutes in there, it’s an old building dated from 1525 & we found the courtyard really interesting, plus it’s free entrance on the first Sunday off every month, that was lucky!

Musee De La Princerie

Monument of Victory in Verdun towards the River

Monument of Victory where records of soldiers are kept on an old carding system

How about this! a toilet for dogs, only in France!

We head towards the cathedral, and square, once there we decide to save the cathedral visit for tomorrow when we have more time. As we wandered  back down the hill towards the River Meuse, we see a bar, Le Club over the bridge, let’s go for a drink ! we have not been to a bar yet and 5 mins later we are having our first wine and beer of the tour! I had Battin Extra at 2.50 Euros for 250ml, expensive but it was lovely! Cathy was happy as they had her favourite Rose wine Cotes de Provence. It was entertaining watching the folks in the bar as there was a bit of Argy – bargy going on with one of the local lads who had obviously had too much!!

We really enjoyed our day and evening today!

Dave