France is closed!

Wednesday 1st November 2017 - Nogent-le-Roi.

We had changed our plans a little by deciding that tomorrow we would visit Versailles.

As we drove past Tours and northwards we realised that the roads were pretty quiet and when we stopped at a Lidl supermarket and found it closed we twigged that it must be a public holiday.  It is now November and it is All Saints Day.  The day that the French remember the dead.  It seems a great idea but I thought it might be a bit morbid thinking of the dead all day?  Whatever people were doing they were not in public places, they were not eating out, exercising or shopping.

We called at one of our favourite places from two years ago, Chateaudun.  It's a small town south of Chartres.

The chateau is very imposing.  We stayed at an Aire de Camping two years ago on a car park just below the chateau walls.  I am wearing long trousers for the first time in a long time.  I managed to avoid wearing them through October but my resolve has now cracked.

Our final stop for the night was at Nogent-le-Roi.  I thought there must be a King Nogent but having checked Google we found that the town already had the name of Nogent and was inherited by the French King and the town became known as le-Roi as a result.

It was a nice small town, possibly a little bit of a back water but there were timbered buildings and a large church and delapidated chateau.

We parked in an Aire next to the children's multi sport area and in the evening a group of teenagers congregated.  We were a little cautious about their presence, we thought they looked a bit dodgy and might be doing some drugs and might get badly behaved.  We watched them walk between a couple of camper vans and thought they may be up to no good.  When I later went to check I realised that the litter bins were positioned behind the camper vans and they were merely being good citizens putting their rubbish in the bins!  They didn't cause any trouble and disappeared when it went dark.  We shouldn't stereotype!