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This has been a lovely, peaceful and isolated stop. We fell asleep to owls hooting last night and are woken by the cockerel this morning. The temperature is down to 14C but once the sun shows it face around 08:00 the cabin warms up quickly. The River Aisne is flowing quickly but the surface is like a mirror until the first of the day's barges rumbles past. Although we intend to cover a good bit of ground today it's such a pleasant place we linger here until 11:00 then set off in the general direction of Le Havre.
The first part of the journey is relatively uninteresting with plenty of featureless dual carriageway and main road, but once we pass the large town of Beauvais we travel cross country on arrow straight roads through miles of farmland and small villages. Now it is all cattle, maize or root crops and we won't see any more vines on this trip.
At about halfway we cross from Picardy into Nomandy and start to see the typical low timber and brick farmhouses and larger houses with intricately patterned brickwork. Here and there some thatched rooves, others tall pointed slate ones. The other feature of Normandy is orchards inhabited by spotted cattle.
Nearing our destination the skies turn grey and the wind picks up. Autumn leaves are torn from the trees and swirl about in mini whirlwind or lie in the road like a central reservation formed by the passing of traffic. We arrive at Ferme da Freneuse on the edge of La Frenaye at 16:00 and Ali walks up to the house to be 'greeted' by a disinterested teenage girl. She returns to the van just as heavy rain starts, which lasts about half an hour then all goes calm. We see Madame walk past towards the house but she doesn't stop to say hello.
The evening stays dull and gloomy so we pull down the blinds, put on some music and have curry for dinner.
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