We have had lots of rain since arriving in France. I don’t know what this time of year is normally like, but I’d guess this is unusually wet. It has rained every day and some of the heaviest showers seem to coincide with when we have been out and about, or wanted to be out and about.
On Friday, the day after arriving, Lionel drove us into Paris from Chevruese. He said if there are no traffic delays that journey would normally take about 45 minutes. It took us about double that time on Friday, as there was very slow traffic. The main cause was a large puddle on one lane on the motorway; traffic had backed up for miles because of that.
On Saturday we stayed at Chevreuse while the rain fell. The family dog needed a walk, and so did the humans, so we went for a walk in the afternoon despite the rain. There are lots of walking tracks in the nearby forest. I was surprised that there is such wild forest country so near Paris. We walked for an hour or two in the forest and saw barely any other people. Presumably, the forest tracks would have been more popular if the weather had been better. We walked past swamps, beside streams and canals, and up through an abandoned quarry on a ridge in the forest. It was really nice, but we did get our footwear quite wet and muddy.
Sunday was wet again. I went to the bakery shop in Chevruese for supplies in the morning and was caught out in heavy rain. Runners were arriving for races of up to 65 km in the Chevruse area at the time. They would have got very wet. I certainly got quite wet in my 15-20 minutes outside.
Today, in the Loire Valley, we again struck rain. We managed to visit the Leonardo museum in the morning, in only light rain, before heavier rain arrived in the afternoon. At 5 pm we headed off in the car to visit a kiwi friend Cathy and her partner near Le Mans. The rain was heavy when we set off and made for difficult driving conditions. We decided to avoid the motorways, since they can be very difficult to drive on in the wet due to spray from trucks and other vehicles travelling at high speed. Unfortunately that meant we ended up on a slow route through Tours at rush hour. I had to drive us through about 50 roundabouts in heavy traffic. Thankfully, it was largely dry for our return to St Martin le Beau later in the evening. We took a toll motorway back home and it was so much better with dry roads and hardly any traffic between 9 and 10pm. For much of the journey on the motorway, we whizzed along at 130 kph with no vehicles ahead and none behind; like driving on a private race track.
For most holidays, a week of cool wet weather would be a problem. But for us, it doesn’t matter so much. We are bound to get more than enough hot summer weather in the south.
