Diane has a clean bill of health. She has been tested and her bones are fine. The surgery has worked well and everything is knitted back together properly. Seems like breaking her hip was just really, really unlucky and no indicator of an underlying condition. Enormous thank you to Claudia at Unicat for helping us get this sorted out. Diane jokes that I kicked her crutches away when we found out all was well. This is not quite true but I did suggest that she could get on with a bit more walking. It will take many months before she has her full mobility and strength back but we are pleased that everything is going in the right direction. That sorted it was time to get back on the road.
France is mostly a relaxed and easy country to travel in with a motorhome. There are plenty of parking places, plenty of service points and wild camping is generally tolerated. The countryside is varied and rewarding, the people are friendly and the food is great. The last couple of weeks have been warm and sunny. Our French peregrination has been a relaxed and easy affair.
From Germany, we slipped up to Luxembourg to buy slightly cheaper diesel and then followed the Mosel river southwards. Avoiding main roads and taking our time, we attempted to link up several nation parks. This strategy was more or less successful and we discovered many new parts of France.
We have a new oven. The Baloo oven story is a bit of a saga and will be recounted in due course. This is the fifth oven to be installed since we set off. Hopefully it is the last one for a good while now. On the up side, it is proving to be the best oven yet and makes me very happy. Cooking is often high on our agenda. You might guess this by looking at me. Putting a tendency to podginess to one side, one of the joys in our life is preparing and eating good food. Bread is clearly an early test of any oven and this was reassuringly successful. A variety of bakes have followed and then we got to the pizza. This was good. But I think it can be better. Understanding a new oven always takes a while. Well, for me anyhow. This one has steam modes. A big step forward in capabilities but at the cost of complexity of operation.
There was a bit of a heatwave. By the time we were crossing the Grands Causses Natural Park it was getting hot. Properly 30°C hot. Fine while we were driving with the cab air-conditioning running but a bit much when we stopped for the night. The road took us high into some hills and appeared to offer a great opportunity. Higher up it would be cooler, fresher, more of a breeze and fewer flies. We parked up on a broad ridge overlooking several shallow valleys. Lovey views, cool air, perfect. Until the flies arrived, hundreds of them. While we were eating at one side of Baloo, a farmer had been busy unloaded tons, many tons, of freshly created organic manure. Cow shit. Mountains of it. A slight shift in wind direction put us right in the odorous path. We’d been at the wine. It was too late to move. We just had to rough it out, truly horrendous. The wind dropped, the stink rose, the flies descended and the temperature stayed resolutely high. Next morning was a quick breakfast, an early start and a promise to be more careful about where we parked.
