Camping Les Abrias du Perche, La Ferte Vidame & visit to Senonches (updated)

 Saturday 19 April

Only to say that we moved a few miles further north, stopping for quite a big shop at a hyper Auchan en route, to come to a small family-run campsite in La Ferte-Vidame.  

 

This is north of Nogent-le-Rotrou and south of Verneuil-sur-Avre - kind of in the middle of nowhere, but we think we mght be just in Normandy. The boss here runs a little restaurant and bar.  It seems that all his family have gathered here for the weekend and they are all having a wonderful time!!  We had a very nice meal there this evening.  They've made us laugh because one of the younger women was wearing a sandwich board advertising all the events they have planned for the rest of the summer and we had to listen to them trying to do some karaoke rather badly for a while!  Dinner was good and we chatted to our English neighbours too.  

Sunday 20 April

 Happy Easter to all our readers!  A chilly day, so we very happily stayed in for the morning and joined our Easter service at home, on zoom.  So after lunch, we wrapped up warm and set off for a walk.  We are almost opposite the Chateau de la Ferte Vidame, a huge building that from a distance, looks quite amazing,

but by zooming in, you can see right through it!  It was built in C17/18 but was ruined in the French Revolution in 1848.

The huge park surrounding the chateau is open to the public (free), but each gate that we came to had a padlock on it.  So we carried on into the village, passing the church, until we found the way in.

The open gate at last.  Here should be a picture of the gateway and then a few of various parts of the park, but the signal here is very poor, and it's taking ages for the photos to download.  So I will try again tomorrow.  Watch this space ....

 ......... Here is the open gateway to the park ..

and here's another view of the shell.

Several lakes in the park.

It was a lovely walk, and then when we explored the village a bit more, we found a very quirky hotel/restaurant/cafe? (not sure which) to have a hot drink.  

 The mairie next door.

 Monday 21 April 

 Another chilly but dry day today.  Decided to take the van to the next town that looks interesting - Senonches, surrounded by woodland and lakes.  We saw on the map that there was an Aire de Camping Car, so we aimed for that.  Here we are parked inside it, but it was a bit of a struggle to get in!  The machine tells you that it will cost E8 to stay 24 hrs.  It doesn't say that the local tax will be added to that! but nevertheless John used a card to pay and a ticket came out with a code on it.  So he got back in the van while I entered the code for the barrier to lift.  Er ... but it didn't lift.  Sometimes it means that you need to get nearer the barrier - tried that.  Maybe it means go a bit more to the left nearer the machine - tried that, no.  After trying several times, a chap from the only other van there came over.  He was rather brusque to start with - we imagined him thinking oh, les anglais!!!  But of course, nothing worked for him either!  Then he was very useful as he phoned the number on the board, explained our problem and was told that someone would come in 10mins.  Yes he did, and of course gave us the same instructions to activate the barrier and fortunately it didn't open for him either!  But that meant he had to find out what was wrong and 10 mins later we were able to pass through .... 

 We are only here for a visit, will go back to the campsite for the night (have already paid) so we do hope it will be working when we come to leave......

So we packed up a picnic and walked through some lovely woodland paths finding a few geocaches along the way.

This one caused us a problem.  We were searching for ages all around the roots of the trees and looking on branches because the clue did say it was hanging.  And then I spotted something that looked a bit odd - a branch that wasn't a branch!   John is unhooking it and pushed inside is a tiny little tube with the log paper in it.  Some cache hiders are very devious and clever.  We like this type.

One of the lakes passed on our walk.

 Took a while for the sun to come out, but this afternoon is looking a lot brighter.