Tuesday August 7, Domaine Distaise, Grane – Apricot Orchard

Drive by shot yesterday. Wished we could have stopped.

After breakfast at the hotel and a late checkout of 11am making use of their high speed wifi, we got a taxi back to Mercedes. They had got the vehicle started again but were still having issues. At noon, as in all France, all work stops for 2 hours, the office and lounge was shut so we wandered off to Le Pelican where we had gone for lunch yesterday. It is quite a large restaurant in the middle of an industrial area and soon after 12 everyone arrives for their lunch, and by 1.45 there is an exodus as they all return to work. The girls remembered us from yesterday and we sat over a very “long” lunch with a salad and a few “beverages”. The heat was building up to 36 again as we walked the 5 minutes back to Mercedes and once again sat in the lounge and waited. We had a few updates and finally at four they came over smiling. Yes, they had found the issue and it was finally fixed. Evidently there was a cable that was intermittently causing faults, so they replaced it as well as three relay switches and felt very confident that they had got to the problem.
It was such a relief to get back on the road again. First stop was not far away at the supermarket to stock up again, and also the gas had run out while it was in the workshop so replaced the bottle at the supermarket. Thankfully the food was still frozen.  Once again thanks to Bonnie and Cliff for another tip of a French Passion site less than 30 minutes from Valence at an apricot orchard. They have visited here twice during their French travels rating it really well. And it is great, we are parked in an open field along with a number of other vans. They have a great shop selling local fruit and vegetables along with a huge range of gourmet products. Picked up a few things, including a jar of apricot jam that came highly recommended by Bonnie (and it is really good!) but will revisit in the morning for more! There is even a swimming pool that we can use, but by the time we arrived and got settled had run out of energy.
We sat outside until late enjoying the quite strong very warm breeze watching the sky light up with distant lightning. Read your comments yesterday Al, and evidently there were huge thunderstorms all over France, but we missed out, and no rain. It was another very warm night.
A few photos from yesterday, as well as today. 

Stormy sky with rain ahead..it wasn't much though

 

Great painted wall in the Drome River