Marcilloles - 08 September 2019

8 September

Last night had quick food consisting of scrambled eggs in the last of our M&S rolls - tasty! Followed by chocolate later on - first since we’ve been away - which sadly is good for us, as we’d been eating it most days!

It’s ironic really, we were below the huge masts on top of Puy du Dôme, but couldn’t use our Mifi as we had no signal, so had to use Tintin’s phone as a hot spot in order to upload the blog! Might have done more research, but couldn’t! We think we climbed about 500m yesterday. Also very glad we went yesterday as we had rain last night, and this morning we couldn’t see the top - was in fog - and there has been heavy rain.

Average night’s sleep, despite being in bed for multiple hours! Didn’t wake up until about 8.30am (very unusual - it’s generally hours earlier) for me it was because I was awake for many hours during the night - brain wouldn’t switch off!, plus with the blinds closed - it was total darkness this morning.

Anyway, it’s been a strange sort of day. We’re usually quite decisive, but have been dithering about the route to drive. Generally we’re only driving an hour or so, so it’s easy, whereas today we knew we were driving towards Grenoble - about 6 hours away.

Colin, the Co-pilot was changed from shortest route to quickest after Tintin was taken through some quite narrow streets! Thereafter, we tried putting way points in, as it seemed to have very circuitous routes!

When Tintin was driving this morning, we stopped off for fuel - €1.39 per litre, which is better than  €1.50+ we’ve seen. We also stopped off at an artisan boulangerie - but too late on a Sunday morning, and no bread left! However, I bought two croissants - think they were the best we’ve had in years! Flaky pastry, buttery and tasty, not greasy - wonderful - would have bought a couple more had I known!

I drove for about 3 hours, turned out we were on ‘white’ roads instead of ‘yellow’ roads, which we wouldn’t have chosen if we’d thought about it more. We were just in a dilemma, and said that route will do!

On a positive note, we’ve seen so much beautiful scenery. It never ceases to amaze me  how big France is. It seemed we drove up to about 1,000m, then drove down again - rinse and repeat multiple times! Quite a few hairpin bends when I was driving too! Our average fuel consumption has now gone down to 26.2. Not surprising, considering all the hills!

Weather wise, we’ve had torrential rain - couldn’t even hear the music in Dave it was so loud!, sunshine, cloud, wind and a variance of at least 10°.

Personally, I find it quite tiring driving hour after hour, as I find I have to concentrate so much. Actually driving Dave is the easy part, it’s taking in all the road signs, constantly checking we’re not speeding, checking Co-pilot for where we’re going (he seems to stop talking periodically - perhaps he gets bored too!), and making allowances for other drivers!

Talking of music, sadly all the downloads that Tintin did before we left aren’t working. They did last trip, but this time they’ll only play using our data. Plan B - back to our actual downloaded music that we’ve copied from our actual cds!

Also, I’ve been having problems with my iPhone. After charging, it was switching off, and I had to hold down the home key and top button to reboot. Sometimes I have to do that every time I want to take a photo. Have Googled it, cleared all open tabs, updated apps, updated latest version of software - anything I’ve read apart from factory reboot. Seemed a bit better today, but in fairness I’ve only taken a few photos. Jamie, you know I’ll be pestering you in due course if it doesn’t resolve itself. 😊

We’ve arrived at a park4night place called Marcilloles, which is about an hour’s drive from Grenoble. A quiet little town, with loud church bells just behind! Let’s hope they don’t peal all night!

Well, time to find food to cook!

Not many photos today - will do better when not just driving...