Onwards to France

All went quiet and we got our peaceful night. By next morning the snow had cleared on the roads a little making progress much more enjoyable. Other than TomTom taking us into a residential area via a single track, meaning a reverse out of maybe a kilometre!

Once on the way the main roads were easy. The A15 towards San Sebastian is newish and free and stays far enough south of the mountains to keep fairly clear.

On entering France we headed to our old favourite stopover at Hendaye Plage only to find it had been redeveloped into a new barrier entry parking at a whopping 10€ a night for what amounts to a station carpark, services also no longer free and now require 4€. We pressed on to Biarritz. Also a new barrier entry to the Aire and now 12€ but that does include electricity and services and it IS Biarritz! 

Digger had a fabulous time running wild on the beach which seems tolerated at this time of year. So he was a very happy boy.

From Biarritz we decided to revisit some Aires enroute to our next nightstop. This gave me a chance to photograph and video them to add or update the information on Club Motorhome.

Aires visited we ended up a very quiet Capbreton, the Aire that is - the sea was roaring! After an invigorating walk on the beach we got tucked indoors with the heating on for the night.

We were thinking of staying 2 nights but with the thought of a deadline to get to the Eurotunnel we decided to press on, any spare days could be spent further North.

Several Aires photographed and videoed we pulled in at Roullet in the Poitou region. Bitterly cold and we had a brief chat with a Brit couple in their Bessacarr and again tucked ourselves back in the warm.

Temperatures rarely got above freezing as we carried on our way the next day. A fairly long stretch and arrival in darkness at Villedomer - it started snowing again...

Services turned off we needed a stopover for water soon and we also needed to start looking for a vet for Digger to get his passport stamped. We ended up at Brezolles, an Aire we've used several times and a familiar vet. Mind you they still charged 32€ for the privilege of their rubber stamp! And the water was turned off at the Aire......

We actually manage our water storage quite well in this motorhome. It doesn't appear to spill a drop whilst on the road  (unlike our Bel-Air which could lose a quarter of a full tank) so we got another day out of what we had onboard. We headed for an Aire with paid water supply for our next stop and sure enough the water wasn't turned off. The Aire was at Pont de l'Arch in the Normandy region and what a lovely spot it was too.

The small town beside the Aire was delightful and being a Sunday the market was in full swing. We explored a bit before setting off.

We have the rest of our route fairly well planned but made a slight detour to look at the recently constructed motorhome Aire at Neufchatel en Bray. We hadn't travelled very far but felt it would be nice to park up early and make use of the included electricity and wifi.