Didn’t get up that early, and after I had a nice shower went down for breakfast – it was somewhat better than expected, and Mo was welcome. We checked out of the hotel but put our bags in the car and left it in their carpark for a few extra hours – they said it was not a problem.

I’d looked at the map and we chose a large park to go to that we hadn’t seen the day before – it’s just past the beautiful fountain and we had no problem finding it.

It’s very nice and peaceful, with beautiful flower beds, paths and ponds with different kinds of ducks, geese, swans and other birds.

Also a children’s area that we smartly avoided.

After circling the park we went to a cafe we’d passed and had a cafe creme – very strong but good, and not as atrociously expensive as yesterday’s had been.

After our coffee we walked back through the centre again, passing the tour buses loading up and along the street with all the fancy stores.

We took a slightly different route back – there was one road that had a plaque telling about the Camino de Santiago – St. James went everywhere!. And apparently he smoked also – ha ha.

I took my version of a selfie at an appropriate place…

We got back to the hotel and I did a quick change into something cooler – it’s a lot warmer than the day before.

We got on the way back to Mansle around 1:00 and made pretty good time – traffic in the other direction on the ring road wasn’t so lucky. Then just before Angouleme there was a convoy of motorcycles that were taking up both lanes and slowing all the traffic. They were protesting the lowering of the speed limit last year and cars and semi-trucks were backed up for a mile or more.

We got home at a decent time in the afternoon, then went down to the bar for a drink, before coming back for a nice salmon and salad dinner. As usual I stayed up a bit late reading.

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