Day 5

The past couple of days have been pretty packed! On Friday night we travelled from Rouen to Giverny, and spent a night in the camper park outside Monet's house.This meant that come Saturday morning, we were in prime position to see his home and gardens before coach loads of people on tours arrived.

We left the camper at about 9.30 after a quick cereal breakfast. As we were early, the queue to get into Monet's home was relatively short. We paid €9.50 each to get in, and spent around 2 hours exploring the grounds and house. His home was so quaint, a beautiful pink house with green shutters and lots of chinese inspired art work inside. 

The longer we spent there, the more people arrived, and as the time passed, it became busier and busier until you almost couldn't appreciate the beauty. We decided that rather than standing around with everybody else in the house that we should go and see the gardens before the crowds moved on. Obviously Monet's famous bridge was the biggest attraction, but we luckily managed to see it with very few people on it! The gardens were my favourite; they made me think of my grandma's house. There were so many pretty looking plants and the colours were amazing. 

After Monet's house, we decided to chill out for a bit in the camper. I made a mean fry up as we were super hungry, and then we decided to make our way to Tours.

Tours was almost 270km away from Giverny. After having a little scare about there being no open fuel stations on our route and us desperately needing to fill up, we finally found a supermarché! Trust me, it was indeed "super" - I got the bolognese crisps I'd been desiring ever since we got to France, a couple of baguettes, and finally, some diesel. 

On our route to Tours, we were taken through some pretty rural towns. Our satnav is set to avoid toll roads, so along with saving us money, it actually feels like we are getting to see a lot of France whilst we travel from place to place as opposed to just motorway. The satnav took us into Châteaudun, and I suddenly saw a sign for an aire - situated right in front of a 16th century castle. The view that greeted us as we travelled towards the aire was amazing, and we thought we would be crazy not to stay the night, so we did. 

Yesterday, after a slow start to the morning and some general camper maintenance such as refilling the water tank, emptying the waste tank and plugging into the mains hookup, we decided to have a little explore. Above the castle was so odd. It was like a ghost town; all the beautiful old houses were deserted or for sale, and very few people were about. Below the castle however, seemed to be far nicer. The river Loire is situated right next to the aire, and many people canoed or kayaked on it, there was also a large park that also seemed to be very popular. 

After a busy day exploring, we thought we would spend another night in Châteaudun, and decided that we would continue with the final 140km to Tours today. 

It's so strange to think we have almost been away a week, 11 more to go!