After a nice rest and plenty of good food 🥘 we hit the EuroVelo heading back south’ish. With the intention of eventually heading east and towards the coast. UK bound!

After calling into a quiet campsite at the end of the day, which was very quiet, due to it been closed! We then zeroed in with maps.me towards another, which was also closed, permanently 🙄 We camped anyhow! ⛺

It would be nice if the authorities could remove the camp ground signs that so helpfully point you to a permanently-closed-municipal-camp-ground!! A trip of 15 kms on a ladened bicycle for something that is closed … just saying!

The next day we camped at another closed camp ground at Vallon-en-Sully 🙄 Not a permanently closed one, but closed nonetheless! When in France, do as the French do: ignore things that tell you otherwise!

We’re in the L’Allier department and following a cycle-specific map I picked up in the Montluçon tourist office (I had to wait till after lunch for it to open!) some weeks ago. Dam fine place to cycle this dept.! 

You may notice a few photos of post boxes! Well, there is a group on Flickr that I add photos too: it’s the Rusty Mailbox group. I’ve collected many photos of rusty mailboxes on my travels 📯 I’m so rock’n’roll!

From Huriel it’s a slow meander towards Châtelus-Malvaleix. Slow, because that’s my pace!! ‘Pole Pole’ as they say in Swahili 😁

Châtelus-Malvaleix again offered a nearly empty municipal campsite (Yes, it was open!) with a very pleasant lake to take an early morning dip 🏊‍♂️

I do talk a lot about municipal camp grounds: when you’re only paying 4 – 8 € (sometimes with WeFe, as its pronounced here!) it becomes a highlight, as one doesn’t have to look for wild/stealth camping spots at that price. That’s unless the camp ground is busy, then I’ll head in another direction … very quickly!

In the evening at Châtelus-Malvaleix’s lake, there was a small group of French teenagers enjoying a splash, with a few beers and cigarettes. What stood out though, was when they all came to leave, they all went round (boys too!) and picked up any litter 🚮 from themselves … WTF! Where I come from that would still be there in the morning! Secondly I heard no swearing … OK I wouldn’t have understood, but that’s beside the point! Some words are unilateral, as I found out in Morocco! I like France 🙂

Routes all supplied by a Garmin eTrex 30. It’s not mine I’ll hasten to add, before it’s mentioned! 😃