I’m back … a combination of no internet, then internet, then too busy, then no internet again has caused a bit of a delay in blogs. Consequently I have probably forgotten most of what we have been doing, but hopefully the photos will be interesting.

We left Lyon fairly late at night after walking for an hour to get back to the van after dinner in the city.

We had no idea where we were really going … just picked an aire in the general direction of where we wanted to travel and headed off. It isn’t a lot of fun driving the van at night … French roads really aren’t designed that well for night driving. I remember a few years ago driving a car from Cannes to Avignon at night with the girls and it was a nightmare. There is something missing … I think it is reflectors. Anyway, John agreed with me that it is really hard to see where you are going.

After about half an hour we made it to the aire in a small village near Vienne.

We woke up the next morning and went for a walk for an hour or so, bought a baguette, had breakfast and headed off. Probably around noon knowing us!

We had a great drive down the Rhone River … stopping for lunch right on the edge of the river.

We stayed on the national roads all day … they are slower but way more interesting and we don’t have any tollway dramas as for some reason France doesn’t recognise Australian chips in credit cards. Everything we do here we have to sign for … so the machines at the tolls won’t accept the card. We don’t have any problems in Italy or Spain and most other countries have free highways or you have to buy an annual vignette … eg Switzerland and Slovenia.

Anyway … we had a lovely days drive and late in the afternoon I started researching where there was an aire. I found one that is considered a special place of interest … so we headed into the unknown up some winding roads and found the commune in the top photo. It was gorgeous and a real surprise!

We had a fabulous view from the van. We wandered around the beautiful old village … no shops and hardly anybody around.

Next morning we decided to give my boots a good test and went for a two hour walk … uphill on bitumen to start, followed by a downhill through scrub, rocks and stones. The boots were great and so was the scenery.