Monday 24 March - Grand Fougeray to Villedieu les Poeles

A cold grey morning and up earlyish as we'd a few things to get done today, the most important being a visit to the vet. Breakfast and serviced the van then round to the vet but they couldn't see us until 3.00pm. Now I'm sure if I'd spoken to the vet himself........... Ah well, it's not a real problem and as we really need to get it done today or the latest tomorrow we'll just wait. Fuel at the adjacent Super U station, which is around the cheapest in France, then along to the Super U for some shopping. That done we just returned to the aire and idled away the rest of the morning.

After lunch returned and were seen promptly and all done 10 minutes later. Bit pricey although probably due to needing two tablets as Jamie is a bit heavier than he should be, which is something we're going to address when we get home. He doesn't appear to be fat but 3 vets now have said he could do with losing a kilo. With that out of the way we got back on the road for a couple of hours; we could have stayed another night but really wanted to get a little further on and 100 miles was okay. A fast N road to Rennes before we joined the A84 non-toll autoroute towards Caen. Bren found a likely looking aire  near Avranches, about halfway, so programmed it into TomTom and found a nice location just off the town centre of Villedieu les Poeles with 7/8 dedicated (and marked off to stop cars using them as it was attached to a busy car park) spaces and right by a small river. Parked up, the usual cuppa but decided against a quick wander into the town when, you've guessed, it started to rain again!

The app noted a complaint that the crows were very noisy and the church clock rang every 15 mins plus the street lights were on all night - some people just can't be satisfied with a free parking place, with a service point too - but the church bells stopped at 10.00 pm and the crows mostly went to sleep when it got dark and the car park went quiet. The blinds took care of the lights!