Road trip - day 19 - Wednesday

As predicted by the forecasters, today is cloudy, grey & chilly .... and wifi doesn't like the change, it's just not playing this morning. Good job we looked last night for potential stopping places for next week, although on ringing Cottages 4u none did short breaks ..... back to the drawing board!

Had breakfast inside for a change, set out for Carpentras around 11am & of course got there at noon!!! Just got to tourist information to pick up a street map before they closed.

The historic centre is really quite small with various buildings of interest squashed in. General impression was the city is quite dingy & dirty; but some lovely & varied buildings to visit. The cathedral didn't look much from outside but inside was very atmospheric. The roman arch just outside (perpendicular) to the church was very well preserved. The old arch of the town wall very well preserved but had streams of traffic through it. We looked for the centre to find a choice of restaurant but nowhere had the street cafés we were expecting, turns out they were all around the tourist info office where we had parked!! We stopped at a bistro/glacier which was a big let down, 2 boules of ice cream, an unhelpful waiter, a14 euro bill & a toilet which needed a key from the bar all didn't add up to the greatest experience! On leaving we passed a sandwich bar, for 13 euros we each had a drink, a sandwich & a dessert from a very cheerful lady & sat outside in the sun to eat. It was warming up quite nicely.

Back in the car we headed for Mont Ventoux, seeing quite a few cyclists on the road. We found a pretty little hill top village called Crillon Le Brave. Two bars appeared open, we heard for an epicerie & realised the terrace at the back of the bar over looked the rhone valley & the lower mountain ranges including the Dentelles. So peaceful. Very beautiful .... apart from the 4 fighter jets we saw doing a practice display over the valley

The 4 fighters turned into 9 as we carried on the road home, although not a consistent display it was nice to see the jets overhead every so often.

LeClerc on the way home to stock up. Found the Pizza St Pierre we had been looking for all week, just as we have meals sorted out got each night!!! Sky now more or less clear & temp up to 23c

Mission of the night was to book accommodation for overnight Saturday & then 5 days, Sunday to Friday, next week before moving up to Brittany. After a few abortive tries we settled on a small Gite in a farm complex of 4 gites near to Richelieu in the Loire, between Tours & Poitier. Spoke to Wendy on the phone & made arrangements, when it came to make payment we got a bit tied up with the changes to FD online banking, but rang them to sort it out in the end! Also booked an overnight hotel for Sat in Montlucon, just over the half way point. Happy to have all nights now booked .... just over the half way point of the holiday, seems like we've been away for ages already!!