Summer finally arrived as we pulled up outside the municipal campsite at Beaune. Temperatures are in the late twenties with a “feels like” high of around 34C.

We were greeted by a line of caravans and motorhomes snaking out of the campsite and along the road, with signs saying “Full, Complet, Voll”. Fortunately these signs weren’t entirely accurate as we apparently managed to claim the last available pitch, which just happened to be a “Grande” pitch at the grand price of 37 Euros for the night. Pitch and two people.

After the last days of travel, we were thankful for an uneventful day’s travel of 228 miles, over 220 of which were on the autoroute at a cost of 72 Euros. Moe wasn’t prepared for the price as she counted the bag of one and two Euro coins. When the machine became irate and started demanding the money with various shrill sounds, Moe told it to be quiet, at precisely the moment a human voice appeared over the tannoy!

We were not expecting the municipal site in Beaune to be a sell-out but a sell-out it is. I’ve never been to Beaune before but some of my favourite French wines originate from the Cote de Beaune.

We headed into the old town and grabbed a beer in the centre before heading back to the campsite and a meal at the campsite restaurant. This was also reservation only, but fortunately we had asked reception to book a table for us.

Yesterday we left Camping TY Nenez at Port Scorff, Lorient, Brittany. We chose a “toll-free” route to our campsite next to the River Loire in Blois. We were on the road by 08:30 (which is impressive for us) and the 280 mile journey had us arriving at Blois just before 4pm which was the time we were assured a pitch would be available.

We weren’t helped by the whacky road signs… I’ll leave the comments open if anyone knows why these have been erected upside down…

We were within 4 miles of the campsite, on a busy dual carriageway, when the Tyrepal alarm greeted us with a pressure loss in one of the caravan tyres. We managed to limp into an off-road area to assess the damage. It was’nt fixable for us so we then had to replace the wheel. It took a whole hour. Tools we needed were in the boot of the Cali, which meant we first had to remove the bike locks and the bikes. The spare wheel was buried under “stuff” in the caravan.

We finally arrived at Camping Val de Blois just before 5pm and after checking-in, we sought a tyre repair shop. The recommendation from reception for Mr Speedy proved fruitful – the failed valve was repaired in 5 minutes and no charge. We left the guys a nice tip to buy a few beers of course!

By 8pm we had everything restored and Joe was ready for a cidre or two.

Moe had also tucked away a couple of French eclairs into the fridge!

During the night, heavy storms and rainfall descended on the area and we wondered for a while whether or not we would be able to extract ourselves from the already soggy grass pitches.