"At The River"

(Groove Armada)

So another day where the road was flat and I sped down to Ciudad Rodrigo. Now frankly I would have liked to have done more than my 61 miles but an absence of camp sites was as far as I was going to get. The cruise down was enlivened by a chap who cycled past without acknowledging me. Now noboby disrespects a Leeds United away shirt and gets away with it. When someone overtakes they usually go past quickly get 20 metre past you and then slow down. Unfortunately he didn't have it on his racer and I got close and just followed him enjoying the 'tow'. So I could see that he knew he was a boy in trouble with his furtive glances backwards but he kept going and then occasionally got up on the pedals to accelerate and then clutched the back of a thigh in supposed discomfort but there I was! Sadly he turned off the road when all else failed. I could have enjoyed being paced toward Portugal. Got to the destination....and you know the story! So by way of explaining how I have coped with the language then in this instance I noted a cafe full of old geezers watching this sweaty Englishman with a heavily laden bike going around in circles and as it was a slow Friday afternoon in a small town then this was first class entertainment! So I pulled up and asked them in my best Spanish....."Campeen?". They didn't normally do talking and a waitress appeared and babbled something before finding their resident linguist who only spoke French. Much to my surprise I understood it was down the hill, over the river and then first left....and so it was. On Friday if the weather is good then all the town hits the river or practices trumpet in a field! Quite lovely really, Spain at its most natural.

Nicely out of tune...

The Spanish at play

"Wish You Were Here"

(Pink Floyd)





The main plaza



One of my destinations on the trip had been Salamanca. I love Spanish cities and I think it was Michael Portillo who brought this city to my attention when he did a series of train journeys in Spain. Salamanca is big and beautiful with the first Spanish university and two cathedrals. The impressive 17th century architecture in this yellow/brown sandstone beams back at you in the 30 degree heat as you walk around the narrow streets that open into large boulevards usually the home to outdoor restaurants and, sadly, the odd swag shop. The city is a tourist destination and judging by the flood of American girls wandering around then they must run summer courses for those across the Atlantic. I was able to not use the bike as the camp site had a bus stop at its entrance and for a €1.20 I was delivered to the heart of this vibrant place. So this was a rest day, not on the feet, but on the legs and backside and it was followed by a fabulous night's 10 hours of sleep.

The newer of the two Cathedrals!

"Where The Streets Have No Name"

(U2)

Couldn’t believe my luck. I raced to Salamanca and got to town at an average of nearly 16 mph. A straight road which ran beside the Autovia and still had gradual gradients and fabulous plummets downwards, actually hit 41 mph going down one hill. Which may be the time to fill in the train spotters on the progress to date... I’ve done 1550 miles, been in the saddle over 6.5 hours every day and covered, on average, 67 miles every day. Average speed is between 11 and 12 mph but time has been ate up by trying to find sites or stopping at interminable traffic lights in towns….not to mention the on board 20 kg of luggage. Which brings me to touring around Villamayor searching for the camp site, hence the title.  



The only venue to listen to the "Nothing But The Blues" download



"Reasons To Be Cheerful"

(Ian Dury and The Blockheads)






...probably the only way to travel

 

Sadly the opportunity to be noisy and wake Pepe and Chiquitita and their sprogs was not possible because they started to get packed at around 7.30 am. For having these unkind thoughts I discovered a puncture and extracted a piece of fine metal wire from the tyre. So eventually I hit the road and was soon bowling into Valladolid. Found a large superstore but I didn’t find a travel adaptor. Now feeling quite miserable I headed for the centre of town, a lovely city where I have stopped over before, and I speculatively dived into a little shop selling cheap watches and radios. Asked for an adaptor and it was immediately produced. Such was my complete delight that I immediately started scrabbling about in my Spanish phrase book for “I love you and want your babies”. The proprietor was a little surprised. Also I found one of the two Portugal Michelin maps I needed and I thought I was on a roll! Leaving Valladolid was the usual mystery tour (gosh there’s a song title missed!) and I went around all of the southern part of the town before finding the way to Tordesillas. In pitching the tent I was discovering rock hard ground and when borrowing something to bash the tent pegs in with from the ever wonderful Dutch they were handing me nail or sledge hammers! Met and was offered a beer by Deborah and Edward who had been ‘on tour’ in their camper van since May and were not scheduled to return home until October. They had let out their house in the Lake District and were taking in some of the more beautiful parts of Germany, France and Spain. Deborah had a hand written diary with illustrations…very impressive. I think Edward had cycle toured in another life and he cast a rueful eye over my mighty Ridgeback tourer the next morning and I think he fancied also hitting the tarmac, preferably with the wind at his back and the hill rising behind him. The fabulous motor cycles belonged to two lovely Dutch people who were returning home after having been to Faro and they lent me a camping guide and gave me a morning coffee.

.....not a lot to see on the road....

"I Fought The Law"

(The Clash)



Literally hundreds of these!



...."and the law won". So let’s start with how the Spanish found large parts of the New World?.......no problem because this nation doesn’t do road signs and have directional clues like that and so it must be something intuitive and …hey presto…there was California! Of course you can see major town signs on the big roads but when within a city then they just don’t bother. I have wasted hours doubling back or ‘going the long way round’…..really frustrating. So with some help from Anna I set off south and was weaving my way round various dull side roads when I came to a dual carriageway …..no exclusion signs for bicycles …. so off I went peddling along this flat smooth hard shoulder when I heard a whistle. I must have been a sheep dog in a previous life because I knew this blast was for me to heed and a policemen came bounding across two carriageways to tell me that I was prohibited from riding on such a road. He then asked me where I was going, looked at my map decided he saw no alternative route and then in excellent English told me that if I was caught doing this then I could help the Spanish burgeoning national debt to the tune of €500. So there was I stuck at a Service Station with no way out other than a gravel track that I wobbled along until I came out on a side road. By way of sweet revenge for my misdemeanour I was then propelled up something akin to Dacre Bank but twice as long (sorry, I know in Yorkshire everything should be bigger) and I continued zig zagging to my next camp site. As I was moving along I remembered parts of the route and low and behold I cycled this route in June 2006, when I checked. The camp site was routine but to give you a indication of the behaviour of my hosts then a Spanish family arrived at 10 pm with three young excited children between the ages of 3 and 7 years old I guess. Suffice to say we had running around, screaming, bedtime stories, father singing arias and when after the long goodnight of toilet runs etc it was half past midnight. Dad then sorted out his tent with much car door opening and shutting. So that’s a tumble dryer and shotgun on my next list for camping….

"No Particular Place To Go"

(Chuck Berry)





So a rest day in Burgos…on a Sunday…..no shopping then! This beautiful city with its wide streets and beautiful buildings had its day as capital of the Castile region and was the centre of the Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil war. A super ambiance with everything reachable by bicycle and lots of cafes and Spanish tourists. I wanted wi-fi and to charge the netbook and so I found McDonalds and discovered that I had lost my travel adaptor…..major boo hoo because finding a replacement adaptor wasn’t a sure fire thing and today and tomorrow the shops were closed. So back to the camp site to chill with the Dutch and Belgians. Cleaned the bike (again) after getting filthy by being ridden in the rain and stretched out in the tent and tried to snooze.

Burgos Cathedral

"Here Comes The Sun"

(THe Beatles)





On The Road Re-fueling



Packed a dry tent and left Vitoria-Gasteiz for Burgos. I got a welcome to another climb start, as you can see from the photo, and the weekend boys on their carbon bikes whistled past me offering the odd “Hola!” before standing on the peddles and disappearing. The landscape was now more open and wide and the vegetation more parched as I took the major road between the two major cities. The hard shoulder was wide and in good condition as I rolled along eating up the miles in this fairly bleak world. Lunch was a highlight with pork steak, fried eggs, bread and chips. Saturday meant that the traffic was quieter and I made sure to stock up again as in Spain the pleasure of Sunday retail has not got here yet! Again lots of ‘toots’ from drivers wishing me well and by late afternoon I found Burgos, which has the most exquisite cathedral I have ever looked around. The camp site was again another pfaff to find yet obvious and easy if you were doing it again! This time I found a more ‘holiday’ than ‘stop over site’ and as usual loads of Dutch and Belgians, added to the mix were a few Portuguese.

"Rocky Mountain Way"

(Joe Walsh)

I had dealings with this part of Spain in a previous life as a buyer of castings and forgings for Ford Tractor and have returned since on a few occasions. During my buying days I remember co-ordinating a visit to see England vs. France in the ’82 World Cup. Basque is writ large over everything on this rugged and mountainous coast line but more surprisingly is the preponderance of heavy industry. As I wove my way inland after a 200 metres drop to the coastal resort of Deba then I was struck by all this manufacturing, with a certain nostalgia for our British history of making things, and another thing was profound…..cyclists. Usually pencil thin men of all ages, riding fabulous road bikes in the best and smartest of kit. I saw more riders in an hour than I saw in three weeks in France. These are testing roads and by the end of the morning I had ascended 598 metres through wooded and windy roads. The green and wooded countryside gave way to something more of an open plain as I descended by 100 metres or so into Vitoria-Gasteiz. It seems so evident, to me, that Spanish cities have had such a profound input from town planners – cycle routes, pedestrian spaces, trees beside the road and smart civic facilities – that you will see in all the major cities. I had identified a camp site but due to Spanish aversion to signposts it took me an hour to find and I was able to put my sopping wet tent up with time for it to dry. After the usual chores I rode back into town to find a supermarket to stock up on supplies.

"Say Hello, Wave Goodbye"

(Soft Cell)

Riding past San Sebastian docks

Sorry…but I have to mention that I got to the French border in drizzle with several deluges to come. However to cheer me up then I received an email circular on my BlackBerry from Jet2 suggesting that I escape the rain and fly to the sun…..I could vouch that France and Spain only offered warmer rain! I came across a Belgian couple of mature years who had cycled down from the Benelux countries to Santiago Del Compostela and they were taking their breath near Hendaye before continuing. I quizzed them on Spanish camping. In fact the Dutch and the Belgians are the most prolific campers on every site except the local nationality. In the Dordogne there were a lot of elderly Brits but generally very few Germans, Italians, Scandinavians, Portuguese etc. Over the border (I was planning to take a photo of the sign but some enterprising young person, I presume, had painted over Espagne and replaced it with Nazio) then the terrain meant less roads and I stayed on the truck laden A roads but there was a wide hard shoulder and I started to get encouragement from passers by, in fact when passing one café, they stood up and applauded! San Sebastian is a lovely city with a beach but I got horribly lost although I did find time to munch my baguette, St Agur and tomato on the front between horrendous rainfall. Getting lost was due to relying on my compass rather than reading the map. Eventually I hit the coast road and went up and down until I saw a rare thing…a sign for camping near Deba. I took this windy road and ended up at a site knee deep in Dutch and Spaniards. Had some grilled hake and a couple of glasses of vino blanco and hit the sack.

Northern Spain coast road on my way to Ixaspe

"Welcome To My World"

(Jim Reeves)

On the banks of the Adour cruising into Bayonne

So another wet start and I did a brutal 50 kilometres down to Orthez with a difficult road, rain and artics (for those of you who know the key on Michelin maps then I was twiddling up a hill with 2 chevrons when a logging truck enjoying the thought of a run up this sod had to hit the anchors as this near stationery bike came into view….lots of gear crunching and he managed to negotiate around me before literally grinding to a halt up this hill and then having to look for first gear whilst creating a traffic jam!). However a delightful event was about to occur, as I had nearly chalked up 3 weeks on the road and over 1,100 miles. Close to Orthez in Baigt de Bearns lived Marian and Tim, sister and brother in law of a good friend of mine in Blighty (Jim) and they extended their hospitality for a couple of hours with a super meal, a stiff scotch and the use of a tumble dryer. It was interesting to have the conversation and I was interested in their life in France after their having lived here for many years. Their new house was lovely and I hope to see it in hot sunshine next time. Sadly time flew and with Tim’s directions I followed the Adour along its banks into Bayonne. It was lovely to follow a river (i.e. flat road) and it was very evocative and different to have the smell of brine and from 15:09 hours (who’s counting?) some sunshine. At Bayonne I bought some grub and headed down the busy coast road. I have been through Bayonne on a couple of occasions on a bicycle and I noted the hotel near the bridge where I stayed with Peter (that was cold and wet I now remember) that was close to the station in order to get a train to Toulouse the next day to fly home. Then I saw a bar where Jim and I had a meal prior to flying back home with the less than lovely Ryan Air. Found a campsite and in the night guess what?.....yes that sun turned wet.

"9 to 5"

(Dolly Parton)




Major down pour in Marmande!



It was good to get back on the road. The second rest day seemed like an indulgence with so many miles and challenges to go. However, the legs felt good. So it was likely to be another ‘day in the office’ just hovering up the miles getting somewhere I needed to get to, although 9 am to 5 pm in fact was 8 to 7! Got to Marmande after heavy drizzle and the heavens opened. I spent some time spinning around the town looking for food and a gas canister. The route to Mont de Marsan meant about 50 miles of tedious forest with no shopping opportunities and I needed to sort this out. As always a cyclist needs food whether to eat during the day or to eat at night. The ride and weather were dreary and squally….and I got dumped on as I ground on. Sadly this was a road that appeared to be a type of cut through for trucks and on a relatively narrow road. I had the joy of these lumbering fellows virtually grazing my hip. After about 85 miles the town came into view and I had to find the municipal camp site. I couldn’t find any signs and the place was heaving so I rang Anna for her to look at a detailed map. In the meanwhile a fête was getting underway and the roads were being shut off and crowds were gathering…maybe not the best time to seek spare space. So after a rush of blood I pushed on not knowing the prospects of finding accommodation or what the terrain was like. However I rolled into St Sever (99.5 miles for the day) and found a site at just after 7pm. A lovely site with a very decent boss who let me use his ‘lean to’ bar area for a place to sort out my things and cook up my dinner out of the rain! (In the photo are the some items belonging to the other people who arrived – see below – however in the morning an eccentric French camper, about to embark on a day’s fishing, sorted out his maggots, whilst talking to himself, amongst the other people’s stuff!)

"Take It Easy"

(The Eagles)

So a couple of days chillin’ in Eymet with over 950 miles covered and the most demanding miles still ahead in Spain and Portugal. Eymet was a ‘Bastide’ town founded in 1270 at the southern gateway to the Périgord. Today this quaint little market town is in the heart of the tourist route in the Lot et Garonne region and you are more likely to hear an English accent in the bars than a French one….”yeah I live darn ‘ere now. Wot wiv the economy back ‘ome and my bad chest due to my working wiv cellulose paints for so many years we live cheaply ‘ere….”  I personally have been here with the family twice in the recent few years on family holidays and knew how lovely and restful it was. I arrived on a Saturday night and with the French predilection for retail then I landed here on both days that most of the shops are shut (Sunday and Monday)! However the laundramat was open and with trepidation and considerable loose change I persuaded it all to work and am stocked up with properly clean togs again. The camp site is mainly British and French with everyone sporting a dog or two. The Brits are ‘seniors’ in the main basically spending some very cost effective weeks in the sun holed up on a Municipal camp site. Did I say sun?......I had a tan after leaving Verdun but sadly it now reflects rust…..yes lots more rain! Bought some Spanish maps and am plotting where I will head next.

"Who Let The Dogs Out"

(Baha Men)

The site at Bussiere-Galant turned out to be a park around a lake and apart from a camp site there was a circus! The couple next door kindly lent me a boule to use to bash in my tent pegs (and I rewarded them by giving them four surplus Michelin maps I didn’t need anymore) and I then, after showering, eating and stuff, read the Daily Telegraph and had a beer. Meanwhile the circus was in full flow and as can only happen at a regional small French circus a lot of strange stuff was happening judging by the soundtrack booming from within as a girl singer started to do strange things with a microphone (vocally…) before there was a 5 minute jazz fusion jam. Next day hit the road and for 60 kilometres it was flat or down hill until Périgueux when the route had its predicable revenge. However, to those who know me then my life would not lose any quality with the absence of man’s best friend. If I say countless then I am honest in being unable to recollect the number of stupid hounds who go off like a midnight car alarm as I cycle past the front of their house. The ritual is that Fido then gallops from one end of the garden to the other slavering at the fence. What really beats me is that if this house and garden is alongside a busy road where there are noisy cars and trucks going past every 10 seconds then if I cruise past slowly and silently then Fido still picks this up (scent?) and goes off like an Exocet. However I was contemplating a rest day as I approached the Dordogne and after stocking up with groceries at Bergerac I got to Eymet and found the site and the offer of an aperitif with the rest of the campers.

Evening meal preparation

"Imagine"

(John Lennon)




Street in Oradour sur Glane



So Rich, also from Stoke, thought that Limoges was a place of great beauty I thought it was just generally drab and tatty. I would point out, to justify my assessment, that Rich, who was generally touring, did know a lot about Stoke City but supported Ipswich Town. So after packing I headed up to Oradour sur Glane. In June 1944 after the Allied invasion the Germans were now starting to just about ‘hold on’ in parts of France where the Resistance were buoyed by the fact that the Allies were winning the war and were starting to become more of a threat to the occupying German forces. In this part of France the Germans were becoming depleted as they deployed their dwindling resources to the various fronts. They were becoming increasingly desperate to counter the insurgency and amongst many crack downs decided in an act of unforgivable evil to kill all the people in this small town just north west of Limoges. Just over 200 SS officers and men surrounded this town and collected all the men, women and children together and the separated the men from the rest and in four separate parts of the town they shot and set fire to the bodies. The women and children they corralled into the church where they shot and burned the bodies. A total of 662 people were killed. The bodies were buried, obviously most unidentifiable, and then they set fire to the town. There is a museum and monument there today but more starkly the town is as it was at the time of the atrocity and you can walk around it. Anyway after this experience I headed south and came across a sign for a camp site at Châbus and thought I was heading to a site in the middle of nowhere….

Yard full of burnt out cars

"I Don't Want To Talk About It"

(Rod Stewart)





"Gypsies, tramps and prats...."



I know I am starting to sound like Paul the Weatherman, on Look North, but Wednesday was terrible. It rained so heavily that I couldn’t hear music through a head set before I fell asleep and awoke to find it still coming down. Packed a wet tent and headed west. Usual grind uphill and plummet down – this wasn’t good as the descent made me colder and eventually got to Montluçon where I dripped into McDonald’s with numb fingers and completely drenched. Anyway…stiff upper lip and all that and completed my 79 miles by getting to Aubusson in the early evening. The next day was dry, bright and fresh and I ground my way into Limoges by doing the usual up 200 metres up then down 200 metres. I had been aiming for Limoges since Verdun and it meant that after a trip to Oradour sur Glane on Friday that I could head south. Now today was Bastille Day (= Bank Holiday and shops shut!) and hence Polish and Italian trucks parked up at beauty spots. So I was going to have to dip into my food reserves and have an unexciting meal of pasta and a sauce but a nice lady from Stoke-on-Trent who was also doing her laundry advised that around the corner from the site there was a super restaurant. How right she was and in balmy sunshine on the terrace I had a terrine followed by a tangine (love Morrocan food) and then a dessert with a carafe of red wine…delicious and the gastronomic highlight of the expedition. Now back to Harry and Crista….





The Limousin (a fabulous place in the dry!)



"The Man Who Can't Be Moved"

(The Script)

Feeling weary after 12 days cycling but a big mileage had to be done to get me closer to Limoges and so I asked Anna to find a suitable spot and 85 miles away we identified St-Pourçain-sur-Sioύle. The ride was quite gentle by earlier days standards and the weather got a lot hotter with my riding in 31/32°, the issue immediately became having enough water on the bike to keep regularly drinking. Other characteristics came back to me such as melting roads. The smells (other than tarmacadam) turned to scents and Vincent Van Gogh came to mind as I saw my first sunflowers soaking up the sun. When I rolled in I decided to take my rest day here which meant washing (more…..I do wash clothes everyday but here with the weather so hot then I could avoid carrying wet clothes on the bike). St-Pourçain-sur-Sioύle seemed like a road and river  crossing point, just above the infamous Vichy, and was once upon a time one of the locations of the 8 mints in France but that all ended in the 16^th Century. I cleaned the bike, borrowed a track pump (bliss) off a friendly Belgian and indulged myself with a copy of The Times. In the early evening it rained and I only mention this because the hale was epic but did get rid of the oppressive humidity. Later it rained and we are talking biblical…..

"Raindrops Keep Faling On My Head"

(Sacha Distel)





The lake at Marcenay



So rolled out of Marcenay and you can see how beautiful the lake, that sat beside the camp, was. I did make the mistake of going for a stroll at dusk along its bordering verdant path and got eaten alive! So from next morning I went from luxury grapes to grain and under leaden skies that eventually introduced me to the first rain of the trip. As I dripped along up and down these valleys I made a management decision and decided to stay in a hotel that night! So I cycled through Dijon, which was very easy on the eye, and found something acceptable on the south side of town which would help me make a swift but easy departure tomorrow on ‘major’ roads but without trucks as it was Sunday. Later I went across the road to a restaurant that served a variety of things and I had a large steak!.....protein re-loading being the priority. The French have embraced fast food but they still are impressive in their selection of ingredients and preparation, I was amazed to see an eleven (?) year old lad side stepping the burgers and chips but choosing paella. Wow..back to sleeping in a bed.

Dijon



"Should I Stay Or Should I Go"

(The Clash)

Leaving Dijon was a pleasure because it was flat all the way to Beaune although I had my second day of rain. Not long after leaving I rolled back into wine country and behold it was the mighty Burgundy with the first stop being Nuits St George. I remember making a pilgrimage here with my ex-brother in law and Poxy Pete (hey…maybe I should get him a Stag T shirt!) and whilst the visit was delightful I was stuck with a lasting impression about the mystery that goes on around wine. The vineyard we visited declared that one year they came across a few hundred unlabelled bottles and so they got the workers together and opened a few bottles and had a guess at the year! A Grand Cru was something that was handed out in the 19^th Century and whilst it generally indicates quality and heritage then it doesn’t indicate the current best wine necessarily. As I cleared Dijon on the quiet Sunday roads then the sky got increasingly grey and it started to rain. Frankly this is not the end of the world. Infinitely preferable to a headwind. I did spot this beautiful Citrȍen (below) whilst driving through Beaune, which I recollect from WW2 war films being driven by the shadier characters. So the roads started to get slower before I got to Autun and wrestled with whether to press on but not knowing if there was camping in cycling distance or stay here. I decided to drop anchor (literally because I had to scurry into the tent as it rained again). Here I met a Kiwi called Keith who was working usually in Dubai but was pottering around this part of France slowly on a bicycle. I met him at just after 7 am the next morning when he was packed and ready to go (it usually takes 90 minutes from waking to departing – it just does!) and as we said goodbye he said “Bon Voyage” and as I strolled back to my tent I was worrying if he knew something about the weather that I didn’t.

"Champagne Supernova"

 (Oasis)





A hill of champagne grape vines



Well I was pretty sorry for myself about Braucourt and when I awoke the next morning the tent was billowing in the wind, This meant that I wouldn’t be packing the tent wet = good, the day would be cooler = good……oh but it is blowing from the south and so that meant 72 miles into a headwind = Grumpy (definitely not Happy, Sleepy, Dozy, Doc, Bashful or Sneezy)! However I was into Champagne country now and the vines suddenly replaced the maize. How wonderfully neat they all are, so well tethered and so manicured. I was on the bike for over 7 hours before I pulled into Marcenay and you may wonder how you keep yourself from going doo lally. Well there is always the next 100m descent to look forward to, worry about whether you have enough water, thinking where you can buy a map, calculating what time you’ll finish, trying to edge up that average speed, thinking about the wife and kids and what they would be doing at that point in time and a few tunes off my BlackBerry and so it was that the tour’s first tune was Morrissey opining about a “shyness that is criminally vulgar”….I’d put together some of my favourites and amongst the guilty pleasures was “37 Horses” by The Osmonds….I feel better have now got that dark secret off my chest. As my daughter had told me when she rang through the previous night that Marcenay was run by Dirk. When I got to Marcenay I didn't meet the aforementioned Dutchman until the next morning and then by chance! I could have used the site overnight and also not paid for that can of lager that was in the Reception fridge....

 

"He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother"

 (The Hollies)

Left Verdun and headed south down the “Sacred Way” or Voie Sacrée. This road goes all the way to Bar Le Duc and was the lifeline during the Verdun campaign that saw tail to nose lorries ferrying troops and supplies to the front. Somehow it brought to mind “A Farewell To Arms” which I saw as a film as a boy about the Italian front in WW1….I must get Hemingway’s book to revisit it. On the road I passed a French soldier cemetery that was in such poor condition compared to the British and Commonwealth graves in the north that I was shocked. The road started to rise and fall and I envisaged a journey south of continually climbing and all too briefly descending before finding those lower gears again. Eventually neared Lac en Der and encountered horrific artics taking a short cut from Troyes. Got bounced at the first camp site but got directed to another at Braucourt that wanted nearly 26 € which was nearly three times the rate…..hey ho!…too weary to argue the toss. 





French Soldier Cemetery


 

A road side graphic of a picture