Hi to All!

So after the joys of the white wine regions that I (Jo ) loved, we decided it would be a good idea to continue through them and drive for a while.So, we aimed for Bordeaux but due to the length of the journey picked a stop off point between some bases we wanted to visit.However, thanks to my wonderful cousin Katy, for the suggested shop to buy a tent. It was surprisingly around the corner from our stop in Poitiers.So we are now the proud owners of a larger and much more comfortable tent (a shocking 3 hours after the advice).Hurrah!

We then headed for St Jean D'Angely and booked in for a couple of nights camping in said uber-tent. First port of call was Cognac.We headed in to town and after finding that Remy Martin was not people friendly we ended up at Martell.It was an interesting tour as we knew nothing of the process and they had some unusual reconstructions and examples to show.They were the oldest (1715) major cognac house in the area.

Next we headed for Rochefort.It was nearby and had a port so we thought it'd be a nice location.We had lunch and wandered the town (mainly shops) then headed back.There wasn't much else to see although we didn't go in the Tourist Information.We have seen a large number of old churches and old buildings that are now hotels of various sorts in so many places that we didn't think there would be much change in Rochefort.Hopefully we didn't miss much.

As St Jean was closed pretty much on Monday (the first place to be closed despite European tradition) we went to the nearest supermarket and bought ourselves a barbeque and the necessary meats to have a night at camp and to sit in the sun, reading and sunbathing. Grateful to find that the current campsite has a book swap system as I had run out.Each campsite seems to have an additional perk, washing machine, book club, pool table etc.We're just hoping for free wifi at the next one.We knew that the next day was a drive closer to Bordeaux so just chilled in our surroundings.

We waited for the rain to stop so that we could pack up our tent.Despite the rain the temperature is still around 20 degrees.We then decided to drive through the torrential rain from St Jean D'Angely to Bordeaux.Luckily the sun came back out when we arrived so we wandered the town for a bit.A gorgeous city with lots of spidering rows of shops (and expensive car parks).I'd love to come back and see more but that's not the aim of our trip.

So after a few hours we then moved on to look for somewhere to stay, which was a challenge.We keep looking for litte hotels in towns but they don't exist.So after a large amount of wasted petrol we ended up at Marmandes at an Etap hotel and their Wifi (pronounced weefee here!) wasn't working! So next morning we were off to see the sights.

First stop was the gorgeous town of Saint Emilion.We would highly recommend this place.We tried to stay but there was no room at the inns without reservations.There were numerous wines to taste and the town is so pretty with cobbled streets and little nooks and crannies to see.Expensive to stay there but would be worth it.So, we sampled some of the local cheese for lunch and moved on.

We decided to take a look at Bergerac (must be drawn there due to the John Nettles reference) but there wasn't much there.We have tried a Campanile for the first time tonight near Agen, and have the bonus of room wifi and a kettle - yay for tea (we brought our own PG Tips).

On to Toulouse tomorrow and hope to head down to the south of France and capture some of the Cannes festival madness!

Hope to add more soon.

Love to all

Jo & Darren

xx

P.S. Happy Birthday Dad!