Ventes-Saint-Rémy

We set off this morning from Ellie’s mum and dads place, also known as the big house, at 1;30am.
Neither of us had gotten much sleep, as yesterday afternoon Ben had been in a car accident and written his car off and even though he wasn’t hurt we both felt we should have been there to comfort him.
The trip to Folkestone was relatively easy with no hold ups at that time of the morning and we arrived shortly after 3:30am. We got put on an earlier train and by 5:50am uk time we had hit the french roads, in the dark, which was mildly terrifying.
By 11am french time we were both shattered and stopped in a car park in the quaint french village of Le Pucheuil for a couple of toasted sandwiches and some well needed rest. We both fell asleep for 2 hours.
After a coffee we decided we didn’t really want to stay in the car park as even though we were tired we still needed to do something so we found some woods on park4night and headed for them to park up for the rest of the day and night.
Foret Domaniale d’eawy was our chosen camp and the location was pretty amazing. Based deep in a forest on a single track with lots of walks.
The first thing we did after parking up was lock all the doors, close the curtains and go for a walk.
This was meant to be a gentle stretch of our legs and some fresh air after driving since 1:30am almost non stop and covering 300 miles but it turned into some what of a major hike.
We set off from Wanda down a gravel track running through the Centre of the forest, spurs of dirt tracks spidered off left and right, but we stuck to the gravel, grateful to have fresh air in our lungs under a blue, unclouded sky. And the fact that we could atlast move our legs.
A couple of miles in, and we came to an information sign, depicting a 5km walk from it running past an old chapel, through the nearby village and past the local cider museum.
We set off having no intention of completing the hike but looking forward to seeing the chapel and investigating.
We headed down a steep incline of probably some 25% gradient and within 5 minutes we came across the tiny chapel that had been erected to preserve the gravesite and headstone of a lady called Mary. We couldn’t tell much more from the signpost and information board.
This is the point that we should have turned back but in our true fashion we headed off further into the woods, up and down hills and after another 30 minutes we decided to turn around and head back.
Now the only problem is we’re really tired and don’t fancy the 25% gradient climb back upto the path we originated from so we took a detour down another track hoping it would lead back to our first trail. Another 30 minutes went by and eventually we came to another track that led back the way we came, but it was all uphill. Not quite as steep at a 6% gradient but it went on for over a mile and by the time we came back to the signpost pointing out the chapel trail, we were completely spent, and we still had to get back to Wanda.
Almost 2 hours later and a grand hike of 10km we were back at Wanda and extremely grateful we had food, drinks and our bed with us. It was now 5:30pm and we were exhausted after a very long day. It was time for some dinner, Netflix and an early bed.Read more