The BBA V2 travels north to the centre of France

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It looks like the days of warm summery weather may be over as there is a distinct coolness in the air this morning and shorts and t-shirt are no longer options when we are out sightseeing.

With only one more stay of 4 nights before we get to Paris and hand the car back we need to start thinking seriously about compacting our travelling grocery box into a much smaller container and stop buying any food that we don’t consume the same day.

Before we left Briguieul we took a walk around the fortified part of the village,through the arched entranceway and into the roman style church built in the 12th century and modified in the 15th century that is one of the oldest remaining buildings.

It is a fairly straight run north to what is virtually the centre of the country and we are looking forward to what is described as a French country cottage with the nearest town some 7km away.

Our path took us eastwards to the A20 which is a dual carriageway that runs north to south through the middle of France. We decided to take this route so we can cut out the distance relatively quickly and also because there wasn’t a lot on the way to divert to sightsee.

Traffic volumes were light and we made great progress getting to what is marked on the map and looks to be the sizeable town of Chateauroux.

However, what it turned out to be was a number of roads that seemed to converge from all points of the compass and not much of a town at all. There was however a large commercial area just off the A20 with discount shops of all kinds and a brand new supermarket.

With the good progress we had made we were going to be at our cottage to have a late lunch and after topping up the grocery box only with what we would need for the next 4 days we headed back to the highway for a few more kilometres before we needed to exit onto the D960 and head north west.

It soon became apparent that this area of France was given over totally to agriculture as any town or village we passed through was basically just one street with a few houses lining it and sometimes a bar or small convenience store. All the principal crops had been harvested except the maize/corn and farmers were busy turning the soil and in some instances rolling it to prepare for the coming winter.

The land is very flat and the fields are broken up by tracts of forest which gives depth to the scenery as we drove along the virtually one lane secondary road to the cottage.

We had made an arrangement for a key to be left out for us by our host Sheela (ex resident of England) as she was away for the afternoon at a market day.

We found the key OK but it didn’t seem to want to turn in the lock of the door we tried. How were we going to get in and have some lunch and we didn’t know what time Sheela would actually be home.

So we resorted to a text to her and after a reply we spoke to her and discovered we were trying to get in the wrong door and that we should have been trying the sunroom door.

We have a lovely spacious apartment of two bedrooms, large kitchen and living/dining rooms and bathroom. The cottage is about 100 years old and Sheela has done a great job on renovating it and decorating in soft pastel colours that go so well with the location.

When Sheela came home we sat in the sunroom and had a glass of wine and chatted about our adventure so far while she gave us a bit of her background.

We hadn’t had a lot of walking today so before dinner we took a stroll down the road past the other 5 or 6 houses that make up the hamlet and out into the farmland until we got to a farmhouse with dogs barking and running around. We weren’t sure if they were behind a fence totally and whether they were used to strangers wandering down their road so turned and headed back to have dinner.

By the miracle of Skype, Chris and Marilyn had set up their laptop in front of their TV in Alexandra, turned up the volume and we happily watched Team NZ win the first two of the America Cup yacht races in San Francisco. Great stuff and more wins to come to bring the Cup home to NZ!!

It was after midnight before we calmed down after the excitement of the races and headed

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