South to Tuffé near Le Mans for another overnight stop on our drive south.

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On the way just after 9am as had an early night last night, quite tired after very early start and long drive.

The plan was to get through the dreaded city of Rouen, home of several incidents and a place to be avoided, and then take the country roads pretty well due south to Tuffe.

We’ve done this journey once before and I had noted that it was a lovely drive. Things didn’t work out quite so well today as something went a bit amiss with the route as we left Rouen, which we had chosen to cross by motorway today. Instead of heading South West as I had expected we ended up South East and the Tomtom refused to direct us away from the busy and boring main roads to the pretty country routes.

So instead of driving through rolling countryside and interesting villages we found ourselves on main arterial routes with trucks for company and driving through a couple of towns of no particular interest but best to be avoided.

We will certainly avoid Louvray in future as our attempt to get fuel at LeClerc was chaotic as the 24 hour machines were having problems with people’s cards (‘Carte Mouette’ message) including mine which I’d just used quite easily in their supermarket. Ended up having to use my ‘home’ card which we don’t usually use abroad.

Eventually Bob stopped Tandy and persuaded the Tomtom to come up with a more interesting route and off we went, off the main road and down the country lanes. Driving along windy, narrow roads, up and down, through pretty little villages and my camera, for the first time that day starting clicking away. So much better and suddenly the drive became good.



We arrived at Tuffé mid afternoon and found a lakeside pitch. Lovely. Stayed here before with no memory of the site but do remember walking along the lake.

I had my first swim since beginning of July in the little pool and the sun kindly popped out for the first time. Then an early stroll along the lake as the sun had of course seen my swimming costume so went back in again.



Campsite is Acsi at Camping du Lac, Tuffé. Excellent site with small covered pool, some lakeside pitches, ample sanitaires and a walk along the lakeside for after dinner.

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