Category: 2017

We moved on to Gien on Tuesday morning. Gien is on the river Loire, on the eastern edge of the Loire region and about 45 miles south east of Orleans.  The campsite at Gien is within walking distance of the town which is pretty handy although we visited the town by bike rather than on foot. It was also right next to the ‘Loire a velo’ cycle route which provides a nice flat and safe cycling path alongside the river.

Gien is famous for its pottery which still produces porcelain today. We visited the factory outlet shop and were staggered at the price of pottery pieces, What??, £28 for a dinner plate?, outrageous. Needless to say,  we’ll stick to buying our plates and bowls in Ikea at 50p a piece.

While in Gien we also visited the Museum of Hunting in the Chateau, which turned out to be well worth a visit. I didn’t realise that there are so many ways of hunting and killing the native wildlife.

One of our favourite meals on holiday is ‘tomates farcis’ which is tomatoes stuffed with pork mince, probably some sage, onion etc, all served on a bed of rice. But at £3.50 or so per tomato, I  baulked at the price this year. Instead, we bought 3 large tomatoes and 350g of stuffing and made our own. They were superb and a fraction of the shop price. We have added this recipe to our short list of meals to do again very soon.

The parking near to the river and site exit was somewhat crowded, but away from the river there were a number of large empty pitches. One of which we bagged.

Enough of churches and godly things and time to move on and head for Orleans via a supermarket to supplement our supplies. The Orleans traffic and navigation lived up to my expectations. It was horrid. We eventually found somewhere to do our shopping and then headed for the campsite at Olivet, a suburb south of Orleans.

Agggh!, the campsite is full, but it’s a really nice quiet place so we go in anyway and speak to the receptionist about booking in for the following night, Sunday. As Fiona spoke to him in French rather than English, he rejigged his booking list and found us a pitch! Well Done, Fiona. Camping Olivet is a really nice little site, very clean, very quiet and with easy access to cycleways and to the tramway into the centre of Orleans.

On the Sunday we took the tram into the centre for a good look around, visiting the cathedral and old town and we found a good small place to have lunch. Orleans is a very modern city with a few old bits. Typically French  in that there are no high-rise buildings and the city has been built on a grid system giving wide thoroughfares and plenty of places to eat and drink, and watch the world go by. 

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The following day we cycled into the city for a further look around and then took a bike trip up the Loire for a few miles, along the canal towpath- Loire a velo again.  It was absolutely scorching. By the time we got back to the ‘van we were both sunburnt,  despite the SF50 protection.

All in all, Orleans is a great place to visit and Camping Olivet is a superb site at which to stay. In fact, we’re booked in again for next weekend (17 to 19 June)

I’ve seen videos and read about the Cathedral at Chartres and it looked as though it was worth a visit, maybe we’ll spend the afternoon walking around and then head off to Orleans. I’m really not a believer in any of the God, JC or VM nonsense but I enjoy wandering around the huge medieval churches and try to imagine how they were designed and built without the use of technology available these days.

We successfully navigated the Versailles traffic and headed South and within a couple of hours had arrived at the new campsite just outside Chartres. After parking up and settling in we unloaded the bikes and were off to visit the town.

Bloody hell, what a place, what a masterpiece of medieval architeture, design and engineering. It is unbelievable. A spire built in 1190ish of over 100m in height, 130 metres in length and 30 odd metres wide. There are over 1200 stained glass panels in the windows, many of them originating from the 12th century. Staggering.

Instead of spending just the afternoon in Chartres we ended up spending an extra day and splashed out on the guided tour of the Cathedral. The tour was given by Malcolm Miller, who is pretty much the world authority on reading and interpreting the windows at Chartres. The tour lasted 90 minutes and focussed on the 12th and 13th century windows; it was absolutely gripping stuff. The windows can be read like a book and they tell a story; they are not just pretty pictures. Actually, they are a shocking propaganda that tell a story that the church wants us to believe, it contrives to join JC to Adam in the garden of paradise, it links the new testament to the old in obviously contrived ways.

Wow, as I sit here in the sun typing this a pair of treecreepers are fluttering around us and walking up one of the trees in our camping emplacement. Bloody marvellous!

Here are a few of the photos we took in Chartres:

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Here are a few of the photos I took of the 12th and 13th century windows. Each pane in the vertical windows is 4ft tall, with 9 panes per window making the height of each vertical window more than 36ft high.

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Every pane of every window tells a story; it’s really just a multicoloured propaganda machine, albeit marvellous.