Peelies travels

Cornwall in late summer sounds great, so we went. The trip began on Sunday 8th September with a visit to old friends Mark and Jan, near Cheltenham. We covered a lot of ground in a 90 minute catch-up and it was great to see them. Then it was on to an overnight stop at Taunton, picked from park4night. This was a cider farm at Monkton Heathfield where caravans and motorhomes are dotted around an orchard inhabited by a multitude of peacocks. Using the experience of the Corsica trip we modified the accommodation to handle a double burner cooker fed with gas from a 907 cylinder. This has improved cooking no-end and will certainly be the way forward in anything other than heatwave conditions (Dawn is only bending down to be in the phtoto. There's plenty of headroom really).  By the time we arrived at Bideford, the weather had turned wet. Lunch was taken inside the Landy, this time with little headroom. Then we headed to the coast at Hartland. The lighthouse...

France Passion provided a super end to the trip in Champagne country, as we picked a small producer and spent a lovely evening and night in front of the farm. The France Passion book shows the location of the hosts and it's just a case of relating this to a more detailed map and perhaps more importantly, the reviews left by other visitors. In this case, the reviews mentioned a great spot and nice hosts at a small champagne producer, Champagne Lysiane Moncourant at Villevenard to the south of Epernay. It's just off the main road running north from Sézanne to Epernay. We turned up a hill and drove across the front of a big house, stopping in a turning space at the end of the road near farm implements and next to a nice lawned area. This was the overnight pitch. Room for one and that was us. It's a good job that our rudimentary French was as polished as it could be after almost six weeks, as the host spoke almost no English. We soon established that we had access to a...