Across country to Paradise in the Dordogne

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A busy Saturday on the roads to the coast today so we were pleased to be heading inland. We saw a mile long traffic jam queuing for a roundabout near Rochefort and concluded it was holiday traffic. On such a gorgeous sunny day not surprising if the while of France is heading for the coast.

We left Ile de Réa a little reluctantly as we always love visiting the island and this last three days have been wonderfully relaxing, made more so by the fantastic weather. We got on very well with our Netherlands neighbours on one side. The English couple of the other side however were really quite rude and didn’t speak or even nod a good morning, to us, or anyone else for that matter, which is not at all the way to behave on a friendly French campsite.

Our route today skirted round all major towns, Angouleme, Cognac, Perigeux and took us along some quite windy country roads but on a pretty straight, as the crow flies route. Clarissa Tomtom was behaving herself for once so we allowed her to let her hair down and just followed where she lead.

Quite a good picturesque drive through endless fields of ripening corn and nodding sunflowers. We love the French countryside. So often we come across pretty little scenes, villages or sometimes a splendid chateau right out of the blue which is why the camera is always handy on my knee as we drive along.

Think Bob’s shoulders must have been aching by the time we arrived at the campsite as there were quite a lot of bends and double bends on the way.

Our campsite, Le Paradis http://le-paradis.fr/en on the Vezere close to Saint-Léon-sur-Vézère is as fantastic as we remember from last year. It was a 4 star site then but has now gained its 5^th star (it follows some very green recycling type processes !). We cannot fault the site nor its superb swimming pools which we have already of course make good use of.

We were a little concerned when we arrived mid afternoon as it looked very busy and sure enough the map we used to choose ourselves a pitch from those available only had 4 pitches left. No problem, one suited us very well and we were soon settled in and ready for a trip to the campsite bar for our free welcome drink followed by a swim. The swim was essential, temperature has been up to 32 degrees today.

We are still very much not complaining, just cannot quite believe how lucky we are to be having such glorious sunshine.

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