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Winter Tour 2008 – Day 14: Except for a French woman peeing next to a British motorhome in the middle of the night, there was nothing remarkable about the night in Gacé. After breakfast we got back on freeway and didn’t have much time to loose if we wanted to be back before dark.

We made it through the smog and bumpy roads in Belgium and arrived back home in Almere, just in time for dinner. At home everything was fine and it was nice to have space and a warm place again with a hot shower.

In total we drove 5421 km during this tour (on average 387 per day), which is much more than our usual distance. In total we spent EUR 191 on freeway tolls in France and some in Spain as well. I hope that visitors from those countries will have to pay in Holland as well one day. We spent 4 nights on camp grounds and the other 9 on official camper parks. Because we spent more time on simple camper parks, we sometimes where short of electricity and should try to find a better solution for that. Our motorhome has solar panels but those are 10 years old and not as efficient as current models.

Looking back we probably wouldn’t do this tour again. The goal was to avoid the fireworks and get some sun and warmth. This year the south of Europe got much more cold and rainy weather than usual and there was basically no place to go. Traveling with our small motorhome in rainy and cold weather is not really fun. We did see some great place but in the end it would be better to save the money and vacation days for a different time of the year like early spring, but then we need a different solution for the firework issue. Staying in Almere is not an option.

Winter Tour 2008 – Day 13: We started the first day of the year with a quick visit to the beach and were lucky to find some open stores to get fresh bread and some local products of the Isle of Rhé like sea salt. Once again the weather was getting worse. There was an ice-cold wind and the sun was hidden behind clouds, so there was no good reason to stay on this island much longer. We will add it to the list of places to visit again.

The route back to Holland was going through the region of the Loire valley. We have visited this area years ago and were looking forward to see it again.  First we tried the camper park in Châteauneuf-sur-Sarthe, directly next to the river. It is a pretty place but everything was closed and turned off, so no floating water or electricity. I tried to use the power convert in the camper to charge my notebook, but every time I turned the converter on it blew a fuse. Without a running notebook to edit photos and watch a movie we didn’t feel like staying there and went back a few kilometers to Briollay. In Briollay it was the same situation – a remote camper park without supplies. In Chenillé-Changé it looked like we were lucky as there was a power outlet next to the camper park which was being used for flickering Christmas lights. I connected the motor home but when I plugged-in the power adapter of my MacBook Pro, it blew this adapter and the main fuse of the motor home. Also the power convert got fried beyond repair. With an empty laptop battery, a broken power adapter and a destroyed power converter,  there wasn’t much left for us to do at night, so after having a good dinner we decided to keep on driving. Two hours and 186 km later we stopped in the village Gacé, which has a simple camper park in front of the town hall.