After our wonderful evening in St Emilion, we made our way north east towards friends who we were visiting on the Saturday evening. We left our idyllic vineyard around 10.30 to drive to Angoulême, another medieval town that is also renowned for its comic strip murals. Apparently, once a year 200,000 people descend on the town for the annual comic strip convention! Most of the town was a bit boring but the centre was quite cute and the comic strips interesting. We had a lovely lunch of tiny shrimps and fondue at the covered market.

We left our lovely campsite on the Île d’Oleron on Wednesday morning, September 10 to continue our adventures. First stop was a delightful car park outside a sports centre so Liz could phone into a meeting back in the UK. Then back up to La Rochelle, an amazing fortified city with its two imposing towers guarding the entrance to the old port and one of the earliest examples of a glass lantern tower. We were lucky with the weather as it had pretty much rained all morning and most of the afternoon. It stopped for the two hours we had to explore the city before setting in again for the evening.

After our lovely sojourn on Île de Rè, we decided it was time to move on so we drove down to the next large island, Île d’Oleron, just 65 miles away. It’s the second largest island in France (Corsica being the biggest) but it was amazing quiet and tranquil. No bridge toll to pay and the roads were pretty quiet once we were actually on the island.

The campsite was another laid back, back to nature type with direct access to the sea. We had plenty of spots to choose from so we chose one near to the beach but also flat. We had shade from the pine trees but enough sun to allow us to have lunch outside.

It was about a half mile walk through the trees to a glorious beach with boats bobbing on mooring buoys and even the local sailing school.

We spent the afternoon there with Liz playing on her paddle board and Jo reading her book with an occasional foray into the Atlantic Ocean. A lovely chilled day.

Miles since last blog: 65

Miles this trip: 591

We departed our lovely little spot in Saumur on Saturday around 11.00 after a relaxed morning. We called in at a local supermarket and a wine warehouse to stock up before our 140 mile journey south west to Île de Rè, a small island off the Atlantic coast near La Rochelle. It was a pleasant journey on main and local roads through villages and a lot of sunflower fields! We stopped off on the way to see the chateau at Montreuil-Bellay which looked very pretty against the sky line.