It has been a travelling day today and so little to report I’m afraid.

We are putting in some long days in the saddle in order to get down to Spain fairly quickly, since Spain is the main aim of our trip. Today we had intended to finish the day with a visit to Oradour-sur-Glane (of which more tomorrow) but by the time we had navigated 250 miles of non toll roads it was nearly 5pm before we arrived at Ordadour-sur-Glane and too late for a visit. You many be wondering what the costs would be if we, instead of crawling along small roads, we paid to use the gleaming French motorways. Today is a good example. Our journey today, if undertaken on the paid motorways would have cost us £44, which I would rather be spending on wine and food!

The other reason we put off Oradour-sur-Glace until tomorrow was that, in all honesty, I was tired out. Driving is one of the many ways in which I recognise I’m getting older. When I was young I would happily drive all day, but these days 6 hours in the hot French sunshine, albeit with Basil’s aircon, is about my limit.

Oradour-sur-Glane has a large, free, aire (45.934737, 1.025392) with room for about 30 motorhomes. In one of my books it says to make sure you arrive early because it tends to get full, but we are now out of season and the aire is relatively empty. It is fairly unusual to find such a large and well organised (landscaped, with toilets and filling and emptying facilities) which is free at this time of year, but Oradour-sur-Glane is a small village with an interesting tourist attraction and so I assume they think the benefit to local businesses makes up for the costs.

Basil in his spot at Oradour-sur-Glane

We have seen some very unusual motorhomes, and in particular the things that motorhomers carry, on our travels. A lawnmower to keep one owner’s pitch neat springs to mind. But on the aire tonight is a very smart motorhome which when it left its garage door open, Sarah spotted was carrying a full size washer/dryer!! We presume they can only use it when they are on a campsite with drainage on each pitch. Our garage is too full of chairs, tables and other practicalities to fit in a washing machine, so we will be sticking with campsite laundrettes for the time being!

Tomorrow our aim is to tour Oradour-sur-Glane tomorrow morning followed by another longish drive to the coast north of Biarritz. That’s if I can make it that far without falling asleep!