Jim & Happy : Bellentre

A quiet moment!

Sunday morning 9am we gave the dogs one last pat and started our day’s driving to Bellentre.

France and Italy (not sure about other countries) have Sunday as a truck free day. It’s so much easier to be on the motorways without them as there are so many, one after the other.

The road trip was long but uneventful which is what we want while we are driving. Only one incident where the GPS lost it’s way on a new part of the motorway. The timing was bad because it was at a junction, head either north to Geneva, Switzerland or south to Grenoble, France. We needed to be in between ‘what to do’ quick quick decide. We decided on Grenoble. In the meantime I got out the hardcopy (the old fashion way) of the ‘European Road Atlas’, to make sure we were headed in the right direction.

I said to Jim, at least stay in the same country. A few minutes later the GPS picked up the existing motorway and we chose the right way – thank goodness. Aside from that one hiccup we arrived safely at 5pm at our friends village of Bellentre.

When we drove into the village we had to ring John and Carolyn for directions to their house. We pulled over and rang their number but there was a French message. Oh no, we had run out of money on our mobile. ‘What to do’, we’ll just have to drive around and see what we see. It is a small village, hopefully we either find a phone which is near impossible these days the worldwide or we'll have to find a person to ask. I notice a young boy chatting to a young girl. I say to Jim stop the car, that’s Carolyn’s little girl. I’d seen her on Facebook a couple of days previous. I said ‘hello, are you Carolyn’s little girl?’ and she answered yes. They have two little girls Lottie (10) & Matilda (8). It was Lottie who walked in front of our car to her house one road below the road we were on. How lucky is that.

We have a self-contained apartment under John & Carolyn’s house. The views are fantastic, looking across to the Alps. It has been snowing in the evenings so to wake up to fresh snow is beautiful. Fortunately, it is too early to snow here in the village as the little red car wouldn’t like it – the tyres wouldn’t cope.

It is revitalizing to be with people we know and to be able to talk about absolutely everything and nothing.