Autumn 2022

Cholet - 4 November 2022

We both ended up going to bed early to read last night - warmest place! We’ve been holding out and not putting the heating on, as we like to fill up on gas just before we get on the boat - and we’re down to one ‘blip’ again.

Was aware it rained heavily at both 3am and 5am, was 13° inside Dave this morning - bit chilly! We serviced Dave as it was free and available, just raining a little. We’re back to the hassle that some Aires require you to buy a ‘jeton’ - usually from the town hall, so that you pay for water. We don’t mind paying, but never seem to find the place to buy the jeton convenient - or else they’re closed when we’re there. Lunchtime is serious business here!

Tintin’s turn to drive - about 2-1/4 hours. We were lucky with the Total fuel station, needed to cross over the road, and had there been long queues, we wouldn’t have been able to do so. Didn’t have to queue for too long - full again - €76.76 @ €1.734.

The grass is just so bright green. It’s the kind of colour that if you saw in a painting you’d say the colour was wrong!

The straight road with trees just sums up France for me. I remember driving with just Dad through France into Germany when I was about 11. He drove to Germany many times. What a hassle he must have had with the péage and autobahn - having to get out the car to be able to collect a ticket or to pay! And no sat nat - brilliant!

Our plan was Cholet today, a moho dealership outside Rennes tomorrow (just to confirm that Dave is all we want!), a nothing day on Sunday to drive to the ferry in readiness for our early morning Monday sailing. Had a phone call from Condor this afternoon, Monday’s sailing is cancelled due to bad weather - and they’ve re-booked us on the Thursday 10th ferry. What a pain! To be honest it was expected. We now have an extra three days to fill - presumably in iffy weather! Means we definitely need to get GPL tomorrow, we’ll need to go food shopping again - we had just enough to see us home! I’ve changed my hair appointment, can’t see my friend Sue on Thursday. You imagine the knock on implications for all the passengers, plus the hassle for Condor having to rearrange everyone…

So, it hasn’t rained this afternoon and we walked into Cholet (population c.54,000). We were here three years ago, but parked up by a lake and went for a walk.

Once again, we were thwarted! There are two huge churches, fairly close in the town. The first one, Église Notre-Dame is a neo-gothic church, 65m tall, and completed in 1887.

Today there was a funeral about to start. Must be someone special, there were photographers outside, police directing traffic. We quickly poked our heads in. I couldn’t even really fit all the outside in a photo - too big, and the street wasn’t wide enough to get further back!

Never mind we thought, we’ll walk to the Église du Sacre-Cœur - only built in the early 1940s in a Neo-Byzantine style. It was built from materials either made or found in the region. Cholet’s citizens funded it entirely. Up hill as you can see by the photo of my husband propping up the pencil!

Would you believe it - another funeral! Once again, poked our heads in to have a quick look as it hadn’t started yet.

We’d been on the hunt for a boulangerie/patisserie to find cakes for our afternoon cuppa. We tried quite a few, either closed, or at one they were just processed and not fresh, in another shop there were flies over the cookies - being very picky today!

The local speciality seems to be Mouchoirs de Cholet - orange-flavoured almond paste and pralines in thin squares coated with chocolate dyed red. We went into a chocolate shop - looks like they were €25 for a tiny tin - didn’t bother. Even walked to a Carrefour Express - nothing. Went back to the shop we’d passed earlier.

It’s fair to say it’s a good job the youth wasn’t busy - very slow!