Heading ever further south, another driving day but we are now south of Lyons and nearly at the coast.

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Today we chose to drive a more scenic route. One which took us through acres of vineyards of the Burgundy region.

We avoided the motorways and instead used the N roads which go through the middle of towns, sometimes hitting mini traffic jams but these just give us chance to look around.

We started from Langres, a fortified town on top of a hill and, according to the number of heavy trucks we saw, a major crossroads on routes between Paris and Switzerland. We bypassed Dijon and still can’t decide if we have ever visited there or not, through Nuits Saint George and through Beaune, which we have, on our first motorhome trip in 2003.

We were, for a good part of the way, following a Route du Grand Cru, which basically means that there are vineyards as far as the eye can see and every village we passed through invited us in to taste the wines. We didn’t of course as Bob was driving and also this is an area for excellent red wine and red wine is best not mixed with Bob.

French vineyard countryside is a pleasure to drive through, as it always looks to be so immaculately maintained and there are some lovely chateaus tucked away behind the vineyards. We don’t think the grapes are quite ready for picking yet as we didn’t see any grape laden trucks on the road just lots of vineyard specialised tractors.

There are also lots of sunflowers fields here, almost ripe with heads so heavy they can’t lift them to the sun.

We drove through Chalon sur Saome, along the Saome river through Macon and then decided to speed up the journey by using the motorway to get through Lyons which we know can get really busy. So motorway with tolls again from Villefrance, through Lyons until Valence, almost at our campsite. It was pay the tolls or arrive at the campsite too late for a swim and the swim wins every time !

Campsite is very good. Le Soleil Fruite (surrounded by orchards), Chateauneuf-sur-Isere. We were in the lovely pool within half an hour of arriving.

Will take the laptop over to the bar in a few minutes and load this to the blog using the free wifi hotspot I discovered on the phone while relaxing by the pool.

Another gorgeous day and of course even hotter as we are now so far south.

Tomorrow we go to the coast and it’s not too far to drive now we have got most of the distance behind us. Then we will stay put and relax for a day or two instead of moving on every day.

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