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This little campsite is so quiet and peaceful that we don't wake until 08:00 and it's another 40 minutes before we begin to stir ourselves. Over breakfast we look at the ferry timetables Ali downloaded last night and choose our route home. Ali phones the Camping and Caravanning Club and books us overnight from Cherbourg on 8th, exactly six weeks after we sailed from Plymouth.
Then we get out some maps and plan the next two nights' stopovers. We abandon the Bugatti museum in Mulhouse as our saviours last night brought us nearly 20 miles in the opposite direction. We say 'au revoir' to them, then park by reception on the way out to use the wifi to post blog and check e-mail then leave just after midday. We pass through a few small villages and feel really at home to be back in France; we've visited beautiful places on this trip and loved nearly every minute, but there is something restful and peaceful in rural France that's hard to beat.
Our route takes us along some lovely country roads, but there is a deviation around the picturesque Alsace Ballon route which looked interesting but is closed. From Lure we have long stretches of dual carriageway through beautiful countryside with huge expanses of autumnal woodland.
The last ten miles are through lovely farming scenery on narrow roads with no hedges so we can see for miles. We pass little small-holdings with carefully tended vegetable patches and free range chickens scratching in orchards. At 16:00 we reach our stop at Courcelles, south of Nancy, and it's a passion; hooray. We can't immediately see the passion symbol so Ali gets out to wander about and is asked by a local if we're lost. She shows him the book and he points to a lane 50 yards down the road. We drive up the farm track, switch off the engine and are surrounded by the sounds [and smells] of cattle and chickens. Moments later Madame arrives having climbed off her dung cart. She speaks simple slow French to us which Ali understands easily, and Nick even manages to join in with a few sentences. Hard to believe on a warm day like today, but in winter she tells us they have half a metre of snow and moins-vingt [-20C] which stops the cows giving milk.
After a cup of coffee the buggy is unloaded and we set off through the village to see the countryside. The road rolls and meanders through pastureland with a backdrop of green and gold trees lit up by the low sun. Cattle, sheep and horses graze in their own fields, stopping to look up curiously as we pause to take their pictures. Back in the village all the houses have large piles of logs stored in sheds or under corrugated iron sheets. Neat little gardens are planted with flowers and vegetables and in a few the owners are out watering.
We return to the van as the sun is setting and the air starting to cool.
Ali starts cooking some steak for dinner. Behind us the cattle in the shed start kicking up a din. Now our French isn't brilliant but we're fairly sure they were saying something like 'Oh no! They're cooking Stefan!'
We've just finished Stefan the steak and a nice bottle of Italian vino rosso when there is a knock on the door. Madame with 1.5 litres of warm milk straight from the cow; €1.00.
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