BRIAN REID PHOTOGRAPHER
France October 2024 - Day 2 South to Chateauroux
Sunday, 6 October 2024 15:55
You cannot control the weather but sometimes you are lucky. It rained most of the day, sometimes heavy, with occasional brief breaks but as it was a driving day that did not create a problem. In fact on both occasions I stopped to charge the car, one to get me here to Chareauroux and the other to start with a good level of charge for tomorrow, the rain was light or absent. My route took me to Orleans on the Loire for a charge and a little walk around the city. Again the rain abated for my walk. The hotel in Ouistreham could not be closer to the port and I will use it again at the end of the trip, perfect for an early morning departure. Like the ferry the hotel was very quiet as is the case in Chateauroux where my car is the only one in the hotel garage. I prefer not to blast along the autoroutes both uninteresting and in some cases expensive. The old route national are still there but now with departmental road numbers and this allows the transit through and around some interesting places that would otherwise be unseen. I am sure Chateaudun in the headline picture would have been worth a visit on a sunny day but the bypass brought me to the air base below. I have put in a panoramic shot from Ouistreham where the hotel is on the right and the port headquarters are on the left. On the way down the road there are lots of ordinary little towns but that is ordinary for France and worth a damp head for a snap. During one gap in the rain I grabbed a shot of what I think of as a typical road in the flatter parts of France. I have included a few photos from Orleans which is a pretty big city with impressive cathedral and riverside. The Loire was up again. The upstream shot does not do justice to the sight of hundreds of cormorants flying up river. My charging stop at Chateauroux was adjacent to the airport which seemed to have a collection of abandoned airliners but I was also adjacent to a field of sunflowers about ready to harvest. So not a bad day despite the weather.