7th September 2023

Quite a few motor homes packed up today, having stayed just the one night. We quickly got our camper ready for the drive to Saint Emilion. This entailed unhooking from the awning, while keeping most of our cooking utensils etc inside the awning. A few items in the campervan needed stowing away, the passenger seat rotated, gas, water and electricity disconnected, and the roof lowered.

We intended to arrive early in the cool of the morning and before the crowds descended. We were successful in this. The drive took us on the route we came in, across the river using the very same bridge. The same roadworks were ongoing. The French were resurfacing a very good quality road. Well, that is by English standards.  We drove through St Emilion, aiming for a car park, which turned out to be for coaches only. We ended up parking on the side of the road which we had come in on. At least we were facing the correct way to be able to make a quick exit.

The walk to the centre was not far, and the village was still pretty quiet. I took the mandatory pictures looking across the tiled roofs of the buildings below.

So many shops were selling expensive wines, complete with multitudes of weird implements to uncork the bottles. There were also differing ways to preserve the undrunk contents of a bottle. (That last item in my view is totally useless, when do you have an unfinished bottle of wine?) Some bottles were mind-bogglingly expensive.

We left without lunch and stopped at a Lidl for provisions and lunch goodies including beer. It was yet another warm day.