We had a lovely night with Tim and his neighbours Kevin and Karen. We have met them before. They are from Essex originally and Kev was a professional bass player and Karen had been a hairdresser and an air hostess. We had plenty of good conversation and a lovely beef bouginon made by Tim.
The weather turned during the day and the night became rather cool. For the first time we saw Tim's wood burner in action.
As the weather had become overcast this morning we headed south in the van. We were aiming for somewhere around Toulouse but not Toulouse itself as we had been there last year.
We are going to try and be good for a while after enjoying too much good food and drink over the last few days but although we have been in France for a whole week we haven't had a pain aux raisin. So, I put the omission right.
We called for a late afternoon walk at Cahors....another place we visited last year. Then we settled for our overnight stop at a place called Grisolles, south of Montauban. It is just a car park but it is an authorised place for camping cars, close to the town centre and next to the canal. The local council seem to be in the process of refurbishing the waste water and toilet waste facilities.
The canal is nice with some exercise equipment along the bank, we couldn't resist.
The town had a nice looking church and not much else.
Since we have been in France we are noticing the differences between here and the U.K. The food tastes of actual food....it still a national disgrace that we put up with cheap supermarket food that has lost its taste. It might last longer and look good but give me the best taste every time. Also, the facilities at all small towns are vastly superior to towns in the U.K. Floodlight football pitches in all villages and towns. The communities seem to have a greater civic pride and have cleaner streets and better floral displays and statues. Town centres retain their character because all the large stores are kept on the edge of town.
There are some downsides though to being in France. The dogs are very yappy, people wear big coats and hats when I think it is still T shirt and shorts weather and French camper van drivers seem to prefer to park as close to our van as they can...even when there is plenty of room elsewhere! Do we have a magnet in the van that we don't know about?
Good news about the mattress topper. You may remember that it was responsible for the bed not going fully up over the drivers seat and then the bed came down (hitting me on the head whilst I was driving). Well it has survived a mattress topper review, since Janice repositioned it the bed stays up better and now we can keep it, hooray!
Lastly, I must explain the title of the day is a play on the town name of Grisolles. It sounds a bit like Gristle and Rissoles put together. Between Janice and myself we weren't absolutely sure what Rissoles were, but I thought they were either fried up corned beef patties or battered slices of spam? I'm still not sure...I bet you are already salivating at the thought. Anyway, my word play could have been worse, I could have used a different word to go in front of ...soles but enough said about that!
We are still expecting cool weather for a few days and maybe a little rain. It's not what we came for!
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