Christening a new Camping Car Park aire

Monday 16 September 2024

Nido's parked up on a free aire in Courville-sur-Eure, about 15 minutes outside Chartres.  There's eight grass pitches separated by tall laurel hedges; we were lucky enough to bag the last available space, on the end next to the river Eure.  We're having a quiet afternoon and evening after a morning of shopping, our nightmare activity!

Yesterday we drove for about an hour to the village of Voves, Les Villages Vovéens.  Search for Sites described it a four pitch aire next to a fishing and boating late.  As we approached the satnav co-ordinates I could see the entrance to a Camping Car Park site and, sure enough, this has replaced the old aire.  It's a brand new CCP aire and I think we were the first paying customers.  Everything was brand new and sparkling clean; there was still a thin plastic film on the EHU bollard and I had to set the breaker to switch it on. There was one motorhome already there, but it turns out this belonged to the CCP 'Ambassador', who had come to check all was working on this new site.  He came over, introduced himself and explained the newness.  As we were the first customers I thought we may get a free night or some sort of tacky goody!  No luck, but he did give us a paper map showing all the CCP sites, which I suppose is fine until another new one opens!

We took a walk around the two lakes, watching families enjoy the warm autumn sunshine and sat outside the van with a cup of tea.  Back on unplanned electric hook up, we charged up all the things and watched some YouTube before bed.

Today was planned as a second Admin day (I filled up the LPG tanks yesterday), so first thing we drove into Chartres to the outside laundrette at the Intermarché supermarket.  Clothes spinning, I did a little food top up shop whilst Cathy made egg and bacon toasted sandwiches and a pot of tea, consumed in the car park watching people come and go.  It's not all Instagram sunsets and beaches! 

The Berger Loisirs motorhome and caravan accessories franchise had a store in Chartres and we've been on the lookout for new outside chairs for a while; our current ones are over ten years old and are held together with goodwill and duct tape!  We visited their Arras store earlier on this trip and had an eye on one particular style.  They would need to fit in the limited garage space under the bed, so we had the rough dimensions of the available space.  But the chairs we liked the look of were too big and weren't very comfortable. There was a Decathlon store about 5km away, so we drove there and managed to buy two new reclining chairs which fold flat and fit under the garage.  They were also €40 cheaper.

Shopping nightmare over, we drove here, parked up and had a cup of tea, sat on our new chairs - very comfy.  We walked Salty along the river and around a large fishing lake.  I didn't sleep well last night, awake at 0200 and sat up with a cup of tea at 0400, so I had much needed nap.  Dinner tonight is a fish curry, using a Spice Tailor Keralan coconut curry mix, before perhaps a bit more YouTube catch up.

The weather's supposed to be a bit sunnier and warmer this week.  Yesterday was lovely, although today is cloudy and breezy.  Having said that, I'm still in shorts and t-shirt and have been all this trip so far.  As we head north over the next couple of days, we're hoping to get in one beach walk this trip before we head home....back to our daily beach walk!