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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.