Thursday 15th – Cognac – France always seems a country of big skies. Everywhere you look whether it’s at night or during the day the sky seems to go on forever. Today we decided to spend the day at Cognac which was an interesting town with a big history of Cognac production. Sions tip free parking on the Hennessey Quai by the river. The river area felt much more interesting than the one at Saintes. We had made the decision to visit a cognac distillery and chose Hennessey. We picked the English tour in the afternoon and were taken across the river in a barge to the warehouses on the other side of the river. The visit included seeing the barrels being made, the distilling process and the ageing of the cognac. Not a drink either ... read more

Oh when the Saintes go marching in – Tuesday 13th September Well when I started to first read blogs I decided that I wouldn’t fall into the trap of writing song titles for headings but just look at me – nearly every one seems to ending up as some kind of pun or song title. It's strange how easy it is to fall into the trap although I am not as good at it as some of the bloggers. The weather is still pretty unseasonal for France and we cannot believe our bad luck. The lack of the good weather has made us think very much about televisions in motor homes, satellite dishes to get UK TV and solar panels. I have always said I think it expensive to put a satellite on the motorhome but ... read more

Saturday – Angouleme, stuck in car parks and new gite for the week. Woke early Saturday morning and did our last packing and said our goodbyes to our Dutch hosts before heading on our journey to Angouleme. The countryside changed dramatically with less trees, more rolling countryside and vineyards as far as the eye could see. A very different landscape to the rest of the Dordogne. Noticed loads of motorhomes en route but no British so the plan of speaking to British motorhomers had gone out the window. Most motorhomers seemed to be French with the odd Dutch mingled in between. Stopped at Angouleme to break the journey as back aching sitting in the car seat. We were not too impressed with the city – first of all had an interesting conversation in the Post Office ... read more

Tuesday decided to visit Perigueux a city that held out horrors for us as the last time we visited we took in a rather poorly BMW to the local BMW garage. They seemed incapable of sorting the problem out and we came away rather annoyed with them. We hoped that this visit would prove rather better. Parking should have been easy as we found a good site close to the river however it was full and had to resort to the underground car park. Rode round for ages trying to find a spot and eventually when we did find one a nice frenchman came the wrong way down the lane and knicked it. Sion was not happy with him at all. The city was quite compact, we had lunch in a nice little italian bistro up ... read more

Like a virgin 29th August 2011 Why are we writing this blog? We don’t have a motorhome . In fact we are virgin motorhomers and virgin bloggers . However we are joining the ranks of the motorhomers and are in the process of buying one. Delivery date – all being well March 2012. Who are we? Glenn aka Engog a retired kitchen fitter looking for a bit of adventure – philosophy – we are only here once and may as well enjoy ourselves whilst we are here. Jennifer aka JenGog working full time for the Department of Work and Pensions Philosophy – escape is sweet - currently digging a tunnel out from work. . . Looking forward to semi retirement and part time working from March next year. And Sion the Sheep . On reading blogs ... read more