Solignac to Vatan

We had a great nights sleep at our park up in Solignac. It was freezing cold this morning at just 3°c out and 6°c inside when we we up at 6am and we weren’t in any rush so I got up and put the gas fire on and went back to bed until 7:30am.
When I eventually got out of bed at 7:30am I realised the first gas bottle had run out so I had to go outside and switch them over in the cold anyway.
At 10am, after breakfast, we filled up with fresh water and dumped the grey and then headed into the main city of Limoges.
It was only a 10 mile journey but for early on a Sunday morning when everything is closed it was a nightmare journey and the traffic was the worst we had seen on this entire trip. We were heading into the city for LPG and once we found the 24 hour automated garage it was a quick and easy fill, once we had worked out which adapter to use. For the first time ever we used the dish adapter and it was the simplest to use out of all of them.
Once we had gas we could go again. We had 2 completely full LPG tanks and 90 miles left to travel and 88 of those miles were on the A20 motorway. It wasn’t scenic but it was easy and quick with no hold ups and at 12:30pm we arrived at the airè du camping carpark in the town of Vatan.
The site is called Camping de Mon Village Vatan and it has 48 pitches all enclosed by hedges and trees, a football pitch/ basketball court with a running or cycling track around it. Electric at every pitch and water although it’s currently switched off because it is getting cold and at the entrance there are 8 QR codes leading to different hikes and bike rides. It is a beautiful site and it must be booming in the summer. We paid €11:50 all in. But we’ve since worked out that our last airè du camping car park didn’t charge us and the money went onto our account so we feel like we got our money back on that crappy airè we stayed at in Saint-Lary-Soulan that had no water or electric.
The village itself doesn’t offer much to do but there was a museum of the circus which looked interesting so at 2:30pm once the rain had abated we went for a walk into town and found the museum which fortunately for us was open.
It cost us €5 each to get in and Ellie wasn’t particularly bothered about going in because we knew it would all be in french but it was something to do rather than just sit in Wanda and it was actually quite fascinating.
It started off with the really early circus stuff from the 1920’s and 30’s, they had clothing from famous French circus people, photographs and even original posters on the wall. Then it went up through the years and it was obvious that by the 1960’s upto the 80’s animals were the big draw. One posted bragged that they had 150 animals including Baboon’s, 20 lions, tigers, hippos, elephants and even polar bears. There was even rare video footage playing of the circuses with the animals. In France animals were being used right up until the year 2000.
In the late 80’s the new draw became the daredevils. People that used crossbows, knife throwing and swords aswell as tightrope walkers and other high wire acts and of course the illusionists.
It was a fascinating private collection and we were really impressed with how it was done and were glad we went. It broke the day up and we learnt lots.
We got back to Wanda at 4:30pm and just before the rain started again. We put the TV on and continued with our breaking bad marathon and as we had electric we heated some water and run the electric heater.
Once the water was hot I had a shower and it was great to have a hot shower in a hot room and then come back into the main living area that was toasty aswell. It didn’t take long for the bathroom to dry out today.
For dinner we had what looked like a pizza folded in half and sealed at the edges topped off with cheese. It was a heavy going food that we had seen in several supermarkets and it actually looked better than it tasted. Then it was back to chilling out for the rest of the evening.Read more