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squiz Member Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 2887 |
22nd September 2015 Mt. Biking: Base de Loisirs – Point Vert to Briord Wind Direction: Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: cloudy Max Speed: 33 mph (knots - unless stated otherwise) Distance Covered: 12 miles (Nautical Miles - unless stated otherwise) Monday 21st September - Relaxing start then hunt for oil cap + travel - sunny Foggy to start with then glorious. Did exercises and had breakfast outside. We were about to drive off when noticed oil on body work at front of the van. Our bloody oil cap had disappeared! Oil everywhere!! Stuffed tin foil in and headed for Roanne. Amazingly we found a VW garage after trying a car part place first. They directed us to what turned out to be a most useless VW garage ever! The guy did a lot of typically French shrugging, found a cap in stock, tried it and it didn’t fit so more shrugging and that was it. He had no solution to the problem at all! We tried a Ford garage in a nearby road and although the guy was helpful and tried two, they didn’t fit but it was a longshot. Stuffed the tin foil back in and had a quick chat with Neil Hurrell to see if he thought the tin foil would be ok to get us a little way further. He thought it would be ok but to get one as soon as possible. We did a small shop at Super U and got a tank full of cheap diesel – around £60 for a whole tank!! Carried on the route we were going to go anyway towards Villefranche sur Soane (where we used to stay in the Formula 1 hotel on the way back from skiing). We did stop at a tiny village which said it was medieval but we didnt stop for long, just a quick walk. It was a pretty road, very hilly and we saw lots of buzzards and fields of cows with calves. With the help of Google on the phone and the sat nav we did find the VW garage without any hassle. They couldn’t have been more helpful and bent over backwards to help us. A young man from the Service desk came out to have a look then talked the spare part man through what we wanted and they located one in another town. He said it would be here by 5 o’clock!! It was 3 so we sat in the car park opposite in our chairs and had our lunch! The sat nav said there was a McDonalds nearby so with sat nav in hand we set out to walk. Well that was a disaster because it was a one way street so we walked miles in the wrong direction, came back on ourselves and did at last find a sign telling us that there were two McDonalds, one 3 minutes and one 5 minutes away by car so we gave up and returned to the van because we were running out of time! The part was delivered before 5 and only 11 Euros!! What a result and it actually fit! We were convinced it wasn’t going to. We put some more oil in as most of the old is all over everything under the bonnet but at least we are now sorted. Set out towards the many etangs on our map in the Dombe area. Very disappointing because you can’t access most of them and the one where we did see herons, egrets, a kingfisher and a coypu was right on a busy road and we got many hoots turning round!! There is heavy traffic everywhere and the ornithology parc is an attraction with caged birds of prey which isn’t out cup of tea at all. We ended up driving to one hide and there were oafs messing about near it so we carried on driving down the drive, found a few empty etangs and eventually parked up in the entrance to a maize field which has been cut and we thought we could get away with. Lots of mozzies so shut the door quite quickly. So a crappy day all round and it was so sunny too!!! PS – The day got even worse as I lost half my pics from today while transferring them from the sd card to the laptop, I cut instead of copy and the laptop switched off in mid transfer – lucky only a few nothing shots! But annoying never the less :( Tuesday 22nd September – little travel + bike **** cloudy - Base de Loisirs – Point Vert to Briord – 12 miles – 33mph max. Woke up at 7 and got straight up, packed the van away and left the field by 8. We went for a drive around, starting at the bird park where lots of other vans had spent the night. Nothing to see apart from hundreds of coots which swam off as we blundered through the undergrowth :) Drove along quieter roads towards Joyeux and actually found a place to stop and have our breakfast on a road between two etangs, one full of water but with no birds – lots of fish rising though and the other one with no water and literally hundreds of herons plus great white egrets, egrets and storks. We drove around to the other side of the empty etang on the way out as we could see a seat but there was a generator making a lot of noise and the birds were actually further away from this point. Left the Dombe area and went to Perouges, a medieval walled town which was well worth the 2 euro parking fee. The first things we saw was bizarrely a little dog taking a kitten for a walk! They had walked miles too! We walked up the hill and through the gate into the village. There were really lovely buildings of beautiful stone (the same as the tricky cobbled lanes!), with original small but thick glass window panes and lots of geraniums – very pretty. There were girls dressed up in costume to help with any questions from a school party which appeared when we had been there a little while. Up until then we had the place to ourselves. The girls in the group were interested but the boys certainly weren’t!! Back to the van and on to the banks of the river Rhone in the Bugey area. We followed the river to park in a great place on the river bank near the Base de Loisirs at Serrieres de Briord. We had a cuppa and a rest before setting out along the river bank to Briord on our bikes. We cycled back to Serrieres de Briord on the road looking for the Roman Aqueduct shown on our map. The only thing we saw was a rill running down into the town from near the cliffs. We followed this back and found a footpath which turned out to be the find of the day:) It was beautiful and went through spooky trees dripping with moss and followed the banks of a beautiful fast running rocky river:) My favourite!! At the place where you couldn’t go any further because of the cliffs on both sides, the river had been split with the rill being diverted into the town. We sat on the waterfall and had our lunch. Biked back down and around the town before deciding that the rill was the aqueduct and with that decided we headed back to the van along the road and a track back to the river bank. 12 miles and 3 hours out:) Spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in our beautiful spot overlooking an island in the river. We saw a kingfisher or kingfishers at least 6 times and had a visit from a family of swans – 5 signets! I did my exercises and Mag had a go at cleaning most of the oil off the engine from yesterday’s disaster! Had chilli for tea. A great day but weather cloudy again. Photo Gallery Here |
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