La Ferte-Vidame - Cleres - Buchy - Neufchatel-en-Bray

 Tuesday 22 April

 This morning we left La Ferte-Vidame to drive further north in stages.  Just love these empty tree-lined roads.

We stopped off for a couple of hours at Verneuil-sur-Avre for a wander and coffee.  The church tower is one of the highest we've seen for a small town. 

We went to go in, but there was something going on - seemed full of teenagers being spoken to.

Beautiful spring flowers in the park

and a sculpture of the 2024 Olympic flame just outisde the park.

We carried on north around Dreux to Rouen.  The satnav took us west of the city which we thought was less busy than the eastern route, only held up a little bit at roadworks where they are building an enormous flyover.  When that's finished that route will be a breeze.

Next stop was where we had planned to spend the night, at an Aire for Camping Cars at Cleres.  We parked up there early afternoon, although we were doubtful about staying the night as all the services that were listed in the book had been closed.  So no electricity and more importantly no water or emptying facility.  But there was plenty of time to walk into the small town to explore.

The water in the stream running alongside the main street was perfectly clear.

The bakery is a typical Normandie house.

Back at the van we looked at other possibilities for the night, with always our regular haunt at Neufchatel-en-Bray if nothing closer.  Well the Aire at Buchy, just 15 mins away looked good.  No it wasn't as it was on a horrible slope (not good for sleeping in the van) and there were several travellers vans and fairground trucks parked badly.  So we ended up at Neufchatel after all!  

Wednesday 23 April

Of course that meant that we could have just pootled on to Calais today, but as our ferry is booked for tomorrow and we'd booked tonight at the Camping-Car Park at Incheville already, we just took our time doing some last-minute shopping for stuff to bring home and stopping for a short walk at Gamaches to see it's lakes.

This second lake was the home of the coots - the speed they were swimming .....

And so we came to our last night at Incheville - another favourite place to stay en route.  We are by another one of the lakes that are part of the valley of the River Bresle.

Tomorrow we must eat up all the forbidden food before we get to the ferry!  We know that any dairy or meat products will be confiscated because of the foot-and-mouth disease in parts of Europe.  Of course we've planned our eating in the last couple of days to finish up the banned foods, but we miscalculated how much milk we would consume before Thursday.  I've asked the people in 3 of the vans here if they could use 2 bottles of unopened milk, but they have all got enough for their own needs!  Unfortunately it will probably have to be ditched....  

Thank you to our readers for following our journey.  It has been a really good one with lots of new experiences.  A bientot ....