Sunday 15 September & Monday 16 September

Marmande to Agen and beyond.

We drove around Marmande this morning looking for the supermarket that we had been told had washing machines in the car park, but to no avail. After driving up a number of likely roads, we gave up and left town heading towards Agen.

We were trying to keep off the motorway due to tolls and speeds that people drove on there, and we made it to Agen via Tonniens, Villeneuve sur Lot, Le Temple sur Lot and many other small historic villages.

We drove past a couple of nuclear stacks along the way, made me stop & think about the environment.

In Agen we spotted a Lavery (laundromat ….no wonder we couldn’t find any in a google search when I wasn’t asking for the right name. We managed to get the much needed washing & drying done in about an hour.

We left Agen to move further towards Toulouse, but we then decided to use one of the free camping areas from our French Passion book. We ended up on the freeway thanks to dodgy Maps software in ipad and after many wrong turns and asking people who had no English for directions, we ended at the farm of Sylvia & Francis…grape growers and wine makers.

Tom indulged in a game of pétanque with Francis & Christian from the farm and Don & Ann, visitors from England, also camping here the night. Francis is probably the best player I have seen, throwing the ball with such accuracy as to knock competitors balls out of scoring contention. Francis then brought out some of his muscat wines for us all as an aperitif before dinner…very nice it was too!

Monday saw us motoring on to Toulouse, via the back roads as the tolls are expensive and we have trouble with the height of the vehicle getting the tickets, and putting the money in the machines. I had fun tricking the Map function on the iPad to avoid the A62 (the expressway).

We passed through many pretty villages and sights, but the camper is too big to park in a normal area so, sadly we had to bypass them. Also many of the roads are really narrow with deep ditches either side, so no pulling off the road to take a few pics either 😦

The road signage leaves something to be desired, with a lack of street names and confusing town destinations on the signposts. I keep saying to Tom that the French removed and changed the signage around to confuse the Germans when they invaded and never got around to putting it back!

We are staying at a camping ground in Toulouse. The lady at reception can’t speak a word of English, so it was fun trying to book the site, but it has turned out OK. She gave us some info on how to get into town, so we successfully navigated the bus & Metro into the city. It has a huge retail area in the centre of town, a long pedestrian mall and a big round common area in the middle…the fronts of the buildings are all curved around the round garden area in the middle. There are some really ritzy apartment buildings overlooking the mall, but apparently they are very expensive.

We did some shopping…so caught a taxi back from the town centre. The car was really clean & comfortable and the driver was very helpful, although he had little English. He even wrote down some suggestions on places that we should see. He got a good tip for his help!

The camping area is strange….no seats on the loos, no toilet paper, button in the shower has to be held in to keep the water flowing and toilets & showers are unisex. The motels that we stayed in at Paris & Bordeaux also failed to provide the normal toiletries that we would expect in Australia.

This is a picture of the camper.

Foggy morning near our spot at St Paul d’Espics (I think)

Tomorrow, we are off own the road to see Carcassonne, a walled city.