Still France ;)
There is so much to see in France!
8th October - 10th October | 2022
First thing in the morning I went to visit the Megaliths of Carnac (Alignements de Carnac), which are amazing to see. You wonder who moved them there and what is their purpose. After that, I drove around (looks like eights and double-eights) the Gulf of Morbihan. It was again nice and easy riding, as this area has so good roads! The only problem was that I couldn’t find a bakery or Creperie that was open (or even existing!) in these little towns. By 15h00 I had some salted almonds and a coke for lunch!
Not having luck with lunch, knowing I will spend again ages later to find cheap accommodation, having not much deposit on my Revolut card to get petrol as only card payment, etc ... I was not in the best mood this afternoon. But then I came to tonight's Airbnb of a French couple and it appeared heaven compared to the past 3 places! Finally, a place ticking all boxes - and on top, Beatrice did my laundry!
The next day started not very well with navigation! I had updated maps on OsmAnd and when I was once en route, just going on a national road, I realised that the distances are not correct. I was off the national road with the next exit and suddenly OsmAnd send me on flight mode right across the Atlantic! And on top, I didn’t have any more streets on the map! WTF is going on here? I first blamed myself for updating maps earlier. As my next stop was only 30km away, I went by google maps to get moving.
I was really lucky, at the place I stopped, one of the restaurants provided me with wifi and I tried to download again the maps, also on my other phone. On both occasions, the area I needed today, remained still without streets - on both phones! OK, there is something not right with OsmAnd! So I opted to use mapy.cz, and when I set the final destination I realised I cannot deactivate motorways or toll roads - anybody knows how? If so, please contact me as might be essential in future! So back to google for today!
By the way, James saw on Facebook that there was a problem reported in France on the Osmand-group.
The rest of the day towards the private Airbnb was boring national roads. And again hard to find an open supermarket (Sunday) or a cafe or restaurant directly along the road. That shows again how much spoiled we are in Portugal with Tasca's all over the country and all year-round opening hours!
After all, I changed my plan about 4x within the last 48 hours as this leg of the journey, since Germany, costs me a fortune, compared to the rest of Europe's travel! The money I will need to maintain and prepare Schimmelchen for US and Canada next year! So enough wailing done for today or this blog!
As I am now really on the move back home, with still a few selected places to visit, I had again a long stretch of boring national and back roads to Oradour-Sur-Glane. I wanted to visit this historical site after I heard about it from Shirley Hardy-Rix (IG: aussioverland) in one of the podcasts of Adventure Bike Radio RAW (www.adventureriderradio.com/arr-raw) from the end of 2021.
Another depressing/sad visit after Auschwitz! It is good that places like that are kept as a reminder not to repeat history! If you are ever in the area of Limoges, do not miss to visit this place!
Tomorrow I have booked already a hotel in Lourdes, close to the cathedral. That means tomorrow I will have to drive nearly 400km to get there - a long day for Schimmelchen and me! I cannot remember when I did on this trip that many kilometres in a day ...?! So next Sunday let’s explore Lourdes before crossing the Pyrenees over to Spain. Stay tuned, and see you next week!
Places | Cities:
Carnac, La Trinte-Sur-Mer, Auray, Vannes, Sene, Arzou, Sarzeau, Surzur, Saint Nazaire, La Plaine-Sur-Mer, Cholet, Oradour-sur-Glane, Limoges.
Driven km | Trip:
Total | Steffi: 30200 km
Maintenance | Breakdown:
./.
Health issues:
Still that on & off dry throat, plus runny nose first thing in the morning - winter is on the doorstep!
Special thanks to:
Shirley Hardy-Rix (IG: aussieoverland) for the recommendation.
France for having so great national roads, you easily can skip the toll roads.