Day 4 - 'les toilettes ne tirent pas ! '

'The Toilet won't flush !' 😱 .. Being on a proper site, as soon as we were ready for the off, it was drain and fill time at the service point for the grey water and the fresh water. Today's route was planned to take us SW again down towards Poitiers and La Rochelle on the coast, stopping off at La Celle-St.Avant for lunch then  deciding on our onward route. With Jill being a star, doing all the driving, I wanted to break the journeys up into decent chunks but still find nice spots to rest, stretch legs and have lunch. The new European road atlas had scenic roads marked in green and we were keen to try some of them. As we passed thru little 1 or 2 shop villages we noticed that most of them had a couple of designated campervan places at the village carpark next to the main road thru, where you were allowed to stay for 24hrs, some with facilities. It was as we entered the little village of Manthelan that we spotted one of these next to the village pond. 


Although we were still about 15mile off our destination it was dinner time and I wanted a wee anyway. Parked up, I retired to the water closet to do the ' necessary' to be rewarded with beeps and flashing red lights. No water to flush.
'What!.... I put 70lts in the tank this morning'🤔...
Crawling under the van all was revealed; the drain pipe was hanging out of the fresh water tank. We had been over a rather 'aggressive' speed bump a few miles back and I think we may have skid along the drain pipework. Pushed back and taped up we had lunch by the village pond then filled up at the free service point before pushing on.
    Driving thru farmland after farmland we wanted to find a château or castle to look at but none appeared;  we did find the Abbey Saint Jouin De Marnes which was interesting but was shut.



    We also saw lots of alien looking electricity pylons. Well, if you look hard you can maybe  imagine eyes and horns. Maybe lit up at night with some red lights and a few beers inside you it might be a bit more convincing.


   We had a plan. Stay at the 16 pitch camper stop in the center of the city of Niort, 99 miles away, for 2 nights and go and see the castle and learn all about Richard The Lion Heart.
The problem with 12th century cities, with castles, is that the streets are narrow. That's why you build the city carpark right in the center, down 'entries' not roads, only big enough for a horse and cart and, in order to promote tourism, you plonk a campervan park next to it with each pitch being surrounded on 3 sides by 6foot stone walls.
As we tried to maneuver our way to the 'site' Jills comments went from 'Oooo' to 'down here?' to 'are they taking the ****!' 🫣

Of course when we did get there all the pitches were taken although I'm sure some of the vans must have been 'craned' in or taken hours to do 30 point turns as they were ****** tight! Nevertheless she did a grand job of getting us in and out without hitting anything or running anybody over.


Onward, I had a backup plan. 18miles west was a 100 pitch stop over in the village of Coulon, pitches set in between trees and hedges.  All the facilities and electric hook up for less than £10/24hrs , 5min walk from the town, it fitted the bill.
Plenty of spaces to choose from,  we parked up in a secluded area, hooked up, got tea on, cracked open a beer and waited for the heavy rain to pass us by 😉

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