Inter-Hotel Clos Sainte Marie Nevers

... school which itself is a 17th century little castle. We are in school 4 hours a day and working hard. After school we do homework and stuff ourselves with chocolate croissants and goat cheese. We are meeting other students from around the world and we have adopted 17 year old Emma from Ireland - a real gem. Outside of school, the 4 of us (with Emma) have gone cheese farm touring; wine tasting, and ...

Day 3... Route66, here we come! All slept well, despite the church bell going off every half-hour all night. Maybe those aperitifs before we left the restaurant helped? :-) Weather looks great again. Checklist for travelling abroad: battery charger, shorts, dressing gown & slippers!

A disaster averted... We're tucking into our pizza and Travers says to Chris, "Did you turn the cooker off?"... We have our own kitchen on the top floor of the hotel, so Chris offered us all a cuppa, over an hour ago!!! Fortunately only the saucepan had boiled dry and created a lot of steam, but no damage done.

Another fantastic day for touring the French countryside. Beautiful weather; great roads. We have struck it lucky with rooms in an authentic French hotel in Premery... A little run down, but the owner is enthusiastic; local bars and a pizzaria just down the road :-)

... the same taxi back to the boat.

We motored through to our night time spot in Cours-les-Barres.

Tue 9 Jun – la Chapelle-Montlinard to Cours-les-Barres

We stopped at Marseilles-les-Aubigny for lunch, after encountering two very grumpy lock-keepers in a row.

That evening was Sue and Andy’s wedding anniversary, so we all went out. We started at the local pool joint, where the bogan at the ...

... and other room for meetings starting at the same time as breakfast finishes. Even a 10 year old could suggest easier ways of doing it, that telling your guests that they must leave early. Anyway todays mission is a much more respectable distance to a town called Nevers (sounds like an album ). About twice as far as yesterday. I have the street maps and have plotted a suburban exit. Weather is great; a bit cold in the shorts but soon warm up. Ominously the wind is ...

... fun stuff, right? Well, I went in the second group...towards the latter part of the day. I had a blast canoeing, I helped knock people off their canoes, I got knocked off myself, fun! Well, the little lunatic boy was in this group...and I had noticed during the day that he had been picking at his teeth...he wouldn't stop! I was too tired to care at this point, let's just have more fun! After canoeing, I come to find out that this lovely little boy...who's socially ...

... it was difficult for me because I've become such a strong headed person; I'm very used to doing things for myself now, that when I was in help, I felt completely helpless that I couldn't do it myself. I have to be more optimistic; I feel as though I've been too pessimisstic lately, and it hasn't been good for my personality. Gotta keep telling myself, "don't worry, about a thing, 'cause every little thing, is gonna be all right..."

... site. We welcomed parents, and went off and away in the bus...maybe halfway to the campsite, I got a phone call saying that one kid was late arriving at the trainstation, and I had to turn the bus around to go pick him up! Arguing with the busdriver was fun...but luckily we got everyone to the site...only for me to find out that all of the other counselors had already chosed their days off, and I had to take the **** days left.... welcome to the new session....

... something to be desired..most of them are RUDE! Oh well..we survive by heading to grocery stores, packing up Jerry and heading off. We got as far just outside of Valence and stayed at a fairly nice municipal park for dirt cheap! The lady at the campsite was really nice, too bad the people of the town weren't. We showered, put on sweats and jeans and headed to the town to walk around. We went into a chocolate shop and one of the sales ...