How do you complain in French? That was today’s task!

The 2 emmergency power backups (good for 3 charges), only charged up to 2/4 little lights, so not charging fully. Decided to ask ( icely) the Orange shop on the Rue Nationale to exchange them for another solar charger/combined battry pack, as the one I had bought charged successfully and has a 1000mAh capacity, which is the same as the  combined storage of the 2 battery packs.

Packed up the tent and headed into Tours on the bus w ith the dogs.Topsy still has a tender front right paw. Successfully negotiated a  exchange at the Orange Shop. My back-pack crumpled receipt refused to scan it’s barcode to the frustration of the staff.

Stopped for a croque baguette of ham and cheese. It was a mistake to ask for it warm. First they forgot about it and it was really crunchy. Secondly, I was getting close to missing my train to Saumur.

Then the phone rang.

“This is Emily from Nat West Bank. Is this a good time to call?”

Emily seems to have an uncanny knack of pucking bad moments: first in the shower, and now as I am struggling to catch a train. We agree she will ring back later.

The lady at the ticket office had to write out the letter of the platform as I could not understand the pronounciation of the letter “i”. Then she obviousky took pity on my uncomprehending look, (now well practised) and kindly dragged me to the platform and pushed mine and the dogs tickets (they travel at half-price) into some stamping machine on the platform and ushered me onto the train.

Then the phone rang. Twice. The first time I failed to reach it in time, the second time I got it. It was Emily from Nat West sgain and we sorted her querie out.

The train followed La Loire (there is a smaller le loire), which is a big broad river with scrubby banks. There is a high bank half a kilometre back, probably the bank of a much bigger river during glacial times. Spotted for the first time grape vines for which the area is famous.

Saumur itself is wonderful. Castles and chateaux line the banks, relics of France’ defence against England in the 100 years war. Having followed the ravages of Normandy as the Allies moved East to liberate Paris in WW2, the footprint of anither war at another time dominated the landscape.

We headed siuth over the bridge, then turned east to the campsite at Île Offard. This campsitr had a swimming pool ANDsold chilled Saumur wine! In 4 weeks I had not bought a bittle of wine. This seemed a good time to change that. I bought a Chardonnay, as it was the only one with a screw cap! Having put the tent up, it was time to open the wine. At that moment a lady cyclist arrived looking hot. As I do not like drinking on my own, so I wandered over and in my worst French, offered her a glass of wine.

“Pardon, je ne parle pas le Français!” Came the reply. This was a promising start. Anyone who cannot recognise French spoken badly with an English accent, must have worse French than me! This was Rosemary, unfresh and jetlagged off the plane from Saudi, who had just cycked 80k on her first day to reach Saumur. Very impressive and worthy of a glass of Saumur! Then another cyclist arrived, Grégoire, who was the only person to have spotted Rosemary topple off her pannier-laden bike, still attached to the pedals!

We arranged to meet up to go out for dinner at 7PM. Meanwhile I went into town and a little old lady, who told me that Saumur had changed, held my dogs iutside the Carfiur supermarket while I bought dogfood. I then stopped off at a wine merchant to sample Saumur wines and came away with a dry rosé. The intention being to hit the swimming pool with it. However it was 6.30 by the time I reached the tent, so I showered and thec3 of us, with dogs, headed for St Peter’Square and relaxed over a very pleasant meal, with wine, coffee and cognac.

On eeturning to the campsite, we were hailed by a groupcof lads on a lads weekend. They were a football team and generously plied us with whiskey abd Ricard. To the extent that ither campers complained of the noise. I interviwed this drunken, but very good natured bunch, and the result will at some time appear on the audio diary!

So a good way to celebrate getting back on the road!