Chartres to Formerie

We were both awake at 7am today. I didn’t sleep great for some reason. I had the gas fire on right up until bedtime and I think in the early hours of the morning I got too hot and started having nightmares. Then I woke up again at 6am, put the gas fire back on so when we got up at 7am it was toasty warm.
We were ready to leave at 8am but we sat around for an extra hour and waited until after 9am to try and miss rush hour traffic.
I’m not sure when rush hour is over here. Obviously there is the school traffic in every town and city, but most shops and businesses don’t start trading until 10am so even when we’re on the road after 9am it still seems very busy.
We had 123 miles to cover today and I wasn’t looking forward to it. High winds had been forecast and even though we didn’t get them overnight like we were supposed to by the time we got to the motorways they had definitely arrived. I spent the first fifty miles of our journey fighting the steering wheel as the wind was giving some really heafty gusts from the left and we dropped down to 50mph for a good deal of the motorway. Once we got to Rouen however we changed direction and the wind was behind us and we started to fly but then the rain came and it absolutely threw it down. The rain doesn’t seem to leave the french roads as fast as englands and water collects on the whole surface and the spray was unbelievable. Even some of the french drivers had there fog lights on.
At 12:30om we arrived at our airè du camping carpark in Formerie and just before we got here I asked Ellie if we had been here because it sounded familiar. She said no but as soon as we arrived in town we recognised it straight away.
We had stayed here last year in exactly the same weather conditions and used it for the same reason. A bolt hole and half way stop to our next destination of Arras. The only difference was last time we stayed here on a Sunday and everything was closed. Today is a Tuesday and everything was open.
We pulled into the airè, I plugged us in to the electrical supply and then we closed ourselves in away from the rain and driving winds and both had teas and coffees and then at 1:15pm the rain stopped and we decided to go into the town to look around and get some fresh bread for lunch.
Unfortunately when we got to the town square we realised the whole town is closed from 12pm until 2pm except for the little shop we brought soup from last year.
We just can’t get used to things closing for long periods in Europe. Spain has siesta time between 1 and 5pm so everything closes for a good 4 hours of the day. In France everyone has a 2 hour lunch break and they close all day on a Sunday. Family time over here is greatly appreciated.
The rest of the day back at Wanda dragged a little. We both watched our phones, I put the hot water on and we both had early showers, then it was dinner time and finally it got dark, we put our pyjamas on and we put the tv on. Once the TV goes on we know it’s settling in time and we can really relax. Outside the weather is still trying to rain and it’s pretty quiet until a huge gust of wind blows over and really rocks Wanda. We’ll have to wait and see if it calms down before we can move tomorrow.Read more