We drove from Chartres to les Andelys today, via Giverny and a wander round Claude Monet’s garden. The house is very fine, the sort of place we could actually live in, especially with the huge collection of Japanese prints on the walls. The Monet copies in the studio/sitting room were a little less impressive.

The gardens and the water garden (via a pedestrian underpass under the road) are a lot bigger than you might expect. The lily pool is enormous, but then it has to be, to get all the tourists around it. Very far-sighted was our Claude!

Yesterday we passed through le Mans; the Mulsanne straight is being resurfaced and it just didn’t seem right to be driving on it (in the wrong direction) at 65kph. But a Fiat Ducato just won’t do 350kph+…

We are booked on the le Havre-Portsmouth ferry on August 2nd, then we’ll (probably) carry on around SW England and back to Yorkshire before heading for Scotland.