4 January 20205 Marboue to Poitiers

A heavy frost overnight and Bren got up to take Jamie out, put the heating on and the gas bottle ran out - we've used an awful lot of gas up to now as it's been so cold. So a quick run round the van, switch bottles, then back to bed for an hour until it's warmed up. We need to work out the timer system on this new boiler, the old one wasn't working so we never bothered with it. Another lovely morning but -3C so after breakfast and trying to roll up frozen solid insulation screens we headed out. The service point here is still wrapped up so nothing to do, although it would almost certainly been off anyway.

Although we have the second gas bottle we thought it would be a good idea to refill at any early opportunity so after consulting the MyLPG.eu app we spotted and visited a station around 45km away at Vendome, just off our route. Unfortunately the pump was on the wrong side of the van and our efforts to try and approach from the other side were thwarted by a couple of cars waiting to use it, something we've never encountered before! Never mind, there will be others along the way and it's good to see that France still retains it's network of LPG refuelling points, unlike the UK where they seem to be reducing.

Next major city on our route was Tours and we've found that it's possible to skirt the centre by joining the autoroute north of the city, cross the bridges then vacate at the exit before the peage (toll) begins. As usual this worked out quite well and on the main road out of the city we happened to chance upon an Auchan hypermarket advertising LPG so quickly turned off and spent 10 minutes trying to find the service station on a huge retail park. And then the only pump was occupied by a French lady filling her car with both LPG and petrol - and she was in no rush........... Once we'd done the gas we thought we may as well do the fuel tank too which would probably see us to Spain. We later noted that the exchange rate used on the credit card was an incredible 1.20 euros to the pound, we hadn't realised the euro was in such a weak state compared to the pound.

But, as forecast, the weather was turning and as we left Tours it started to rain. Stopped at a supermarket at Montbuzon to buy a baguette for lunch and treat ourselves to cakes for later in the afternoon. Despite the rain we still made good progress but had now spent too much time messing about, not helped when Jamie suddenly announced quite volubly that we'd better stop NOW or suffer the consequences, so had to rein in our expectations for a night stop. In the end we chose Futuroscope at Poitiers, a place we've used before, knowing there were full services there and oodles of space. Couldn't quite remember how to get into the parking but eventually spotted the entrance at the other end of a one way street (yes, going the other way but there was no-one coming...) We went straight to the service point to fill up the water and emptied the loo and waste tank whilst we were there to save time in the morning. Then settle down for the evening as it turned dark - still raining.