The trip back to Crocq

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We left François and Marie-France's today at around 10 am to drive back to Crocq. They were very disappointed that we only spent 2 days and they made us promise the next time it would be at least a week! Lovely, lovely people! We decided to take the "shortest" route back as opposed to the "fastest" route as I didn't want to travel on the motorways again. The shortest route was certainly NOT the fastest but, boy, was it gorgeous!. We drove through the Ardeche region and the Auvergne region....both stunningly beautiful regions. The roads were small and winding and we went over some very big semi-mountains (being from the Rockies in Canada it's hard to actually call these mountains!) though they were quite high! Some places reminded us of the highlands in Scotland. We passed through some very busy tourist areas with lakes and thermal spas and very quaint towns to go along with them. We saw a lot of the Puy de Dome region, as well, and the many, many volcanoes. We were very impressed with the beauty of everything we saw. Choosing a retirement area is going to be tough!! We stopped just outside of Le Puy en Velay and had a lovely lunch. Ken had an egg and cèpe mushroom scramble as an appetizer and I had a nice tomato salad. We swapped 1/2 way through! Then we both had an entrée of mashed potatoes and some kind of regional ground meat that was delicious. Then we had some regional cheeses and a dessert of apples sautéed in butter and sugar and topped with a type of whipped cream special to the region. Our waitress was very helpful and informative! Our drive took us through 2 regional natural parks....Parc Regional des Monts d'Ardeche and Parc Regional des Volcans d'Auvergne. It was truly a beautiful, if long, drive! We arrived in Crocq right around 6 pm. It was a very hot day....in the low 30'sC everywhere we were and at about 8 pm we had a big thunderstorm move through the Creuse region - cooled things down nicely! Got some beautiful pictures to post and then off to bed!

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Photos

Le Puy en Lay
I think!

Somewhere in the Ardeche!
Chateau Murol, I think

Mont d'Or
In the Auvergne

Not sure what these are but they were cool lol
They were made of bales of hay covered in plastic