So the second night in a row and I'm in an almost identical F1 hotel room!

Yesterdays drive was quite hard going, ironically being less tired I took less breaks then got to stretch of road where there seemed to be no shaded places to stop. I seemed to get stuck behind an endless stream of Lorries and was generally not enjoying myself. Quite the opposite of my original plan for a laid back journey north!

Eventually I gave up looking for shade and stopped an the next lay-bye. I noticed that there was a stall selling fruit so crossed over the road and got a melon to eat for lunch, not thinking that I lacked a knife to cut it up! I also added another bottle of Vin de Pays to my growing collection.

So a little further down the road and I final found a decent Aire de Repos, with some shade and seating and took out the melon at that point realising about the lack of cutlery! That's okay I thought there a Stanley knife in the tool kit, except that that slot was empty! Best available was a screw driver! So I hacked the melon in half, getting juice every where and then pro ceded to eat it using half stale mini baguette as a spoon! More mess, but it was really good, and lifted my spirits considerably, half was more than enough (especially combined with the bread) so I left the other half for the wasps, whose attention I had attracted!

Although in brighter spirits I was still ground down by the heat so being just south of Brive at this point, I decided to revisit the F1 hotel there I had used on the way down. Although the room number was different, you couldn't have told from inside! This time I also noticed a pizza restaurant opposite that I had seen on the way down and so ordered a quatre frommage pizza, standard vegetarian fair in France I think!

This put me just over a third of the way to Plancoët, so a research up the locations of several F1 hotels about the same distance again, so that I would have only a couple of hours to drive on the last stint, the day of the gig.

So tonight finds me in Saint Luce sur Loire just outside / on the edge of of Nantes, having just come back from a walk down to the Loire it self. All the restaurants within walking distance are shut (!) and so my meal has been a three cheese salad from Carefours and some more cheese (Ch�vres) and a not so stale baguette. I bought a small pack of plastic knifes too!

Just a couple of hours driving tomorrow will put me in Plancoët ready for another great gig...

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