Well after a very warm night we’re off to tour Chambord. It’s certainly over the top by any standards- begun in 1519 as a weekend hunting lodge by King Francois I it quickly snowballed into one of the most expensive projects ever – 440 rooms, 365 fireplaces and 84 staircases including the central double helix spiral staircase apparently based on a design by Leonardo  da Vinci (the King was a big fan – but more on this later…).  Strangely enough, during the total 32 years of his reign the King only stayed here for 42 days!

The first and second floors contain an assortment of recreation of the King’s apartments and various exhibitions but the roof has a amazing collections of towers and chimneys that look like some thing straight out of Hogwarts.

Mid-afternoon we drove west along the Loire to Amboise. We are staying on the campsite on an island in the river. This is the view from the site…..

Tomorrow we will amble into Amboise ……..

So this is where we are staying tonight…….

….. not too shabby but first things first……

As promised, this morning after breakfast (which featured an impressively named make of bread …)

…we walked along the river and then up some rather steep roads into the centre of Chartres

It was a very attractive walk but the town is most famous for the cathedral and the quite spectacular stained glass windows…….

After walking back to the camp site we packed up and drove south into the Loire valley itself. We arrived around 4pm at the car park at Chambord – the biggest and most spectacular of the chateaux in France. The location is well set up for Motorhomes, the section of the car park we we are in is like a basic camp site and the parking fee covers a 24 hour stay.  We can walk around the grounds at our leisure tonight and will visit the chateau itself in the morning – so more on the building tomorrow.  In the grounds we also managed to find a pretty high tech ‘cave’ offering local wine tasting – well we couldn’t say no!

Incidentally the temperature this afternoon has been high – around 30 degrees C – with the forecast showing it going even higher!

Nothing too much to record today as much of it consisted of a long drive south.

We left Montreuil mid morning and drove south, keeping well to the west of Paris.  We passed through the outskirts of Rouen before arriving at a campsite in Chartres around 5pm.

There is a very nice walk from here (about 1.5 miles) along the river into the old town. We are keen to see the very famous cathedral here but decided we were too knackered and just had a short stroll by the river ……..

……..before getting the BBQ out and having a very enjoyable meal outside the van in the warm evening light.

Hopefully we’ll get to the Cathedral in the Morning!

The van was all packed up ready to go when we hit a bit of a snag. We took the motorhome off the driveway and tried to move our Ford S-Max off the road in its place.  After multiple attempts the S-Max refused to start! With the Eurotunnel crossing booked and time running out we decided to leave the pile of **** on the road and call the RAC when we get home!

After the delayed start the drive down to Folkestone was  smooth and we had just enough time at the terminal to grab some food before we drove (carefully!) on to the train.

We headed for a first night’s stop at Montreuil, about an hour south of Calais.  Rather than just using the motorways we told the Satnav to avoid toll roads and we ended up with a nice trip through the French countryside.

At Montreuil there’s a very good (and free) aire, which unfortunately was full:

We stopped in the car park next to the aire which was fine for the night apart from having to avoid the eight(!) coaches used as school buses which turned up at 5:30pm and disappeared at 6pm.

The town is very unusual in that in is built within some old fortified walls and you can walk the entire length of the ramparts around the town.  The wall was extremely high in places with no fence between the path and edge – not a walk for those with a fear of heights.