{"id":7598,"date":"2026-05-30T19:55:48","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T19:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=7598"},"modified":"2026-05-30T19:55:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T19:55:48","slug":"4-heading-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=7598","title":{"rendered":"4. HEADING EAST."},"content":{"rendered":"

Arriving at \u00c9vron nice and early – before the reception opened even – we were given the same pitch as a French family who arrived 10 minutes after us.\u00a0 But the site was largely empty.\u00a0 We moved one place left and they moved one pitch right.\u00a0 Nothing against French families, but why park adjacent when it’s not necessary.\u00a0 They might snore!\u00a0 (And it’s just possible that we might, too!)<\/p>\n

All pitches here are fully serviced.\u00a0 We have water piped in and waste drained out.\u00a0 Very refined, no dragging water around the place!<\/p>\n

It’s very rural here.\u00a0 While walking five minutes from the site in one direction we have a massive Super U, five minutes the other way we were in narrow lanes of the “walking route of the Marais”.\u00a0 Not that there was much evidence of a marsh.<\/p>\n

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Heading south, we visited Sainte Suzanne, the location of the almost full campsite at which we decided not to stay.\u00a0 It’s a medieval town with a friendly greeting at the war memorial.\u00a0 Two German, WW II howitzers pointing at visitors.<\/p>\n

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But immediately opposite was a little coffee shack.\u00a0 A “guingette”, owned by Carol who used to run the hotel and restaurant in town.\u00a0 La cabane de Carol-Marie.\u00a0 A guingette is defined (amongst other things) as an open air caf\u00e9.\u00a0 As such, it is exempt from a lot of the planning beaurocracy for which French Mairies are famed.\u00a0 She does lovely filled baguettes and maybe fish and chips.\u00a0 And she doesn’t point artillery at customers!<\/p>\n

The castle has been updated with state of the art (at the time) defensive structures and embellishments.\u00a0 The signs around the place gave a clear explanation of the downward facing arrow slots, the curtain walls, the defended drawbridge and so on.\u00a0 At least I presume they were clear.\u00a0 The section on defence against ballistic missiles and drones seemed a bit confused – or was it my translation?<\/p>\n

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According to the local tourist office information, the “Salt Attic” is located in the Rue de Grenier \u00e0 sel.\u00a0 (I’d lay money on the street being named after the attic rather than the other way round!)\u00a0 This is a former salt store dating back to 1725.\u00a0 It has retained its “three-lock door”.\u00a0 It can only be opened if the three locks are simultaneously unlocked.\u00a0 The three most important notables of the town, each holding a different key, had to be present to enter this building.\u00a0 Maybe prison gates in the UK need this security system to reduce the number of dangerous prisoners being “accidentally” released into the community.<\/p>\n

All the inhabitants of Sainte-Suzanne and the 25 surrounding parishes were required to come and collect their salt supplies and had to pay a tax called the gabelle.\u00a0 In Sainte-Suzanne, the gabelle was a very high tax compared to other regions, such as Brittany, which was exempt.\u00a0 This tax was thus locally considered unfair, and salt smugglers, called “false salt makers,” appeared on the scene.\u00a0 The salt granary was looted by the population in 1790.\u00a0 Of course they didn’t know then just how dangerous salt actually is.\u00a0 Hypertension, heart disease, strokes, insanity…<\/p>\n

Please pass on the salt, Glenda!<\/p>\n

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We walked round the ramparts inside the castle and then around the path outside.\u00a0 Le jardin m\u00e9di\u00e9val de Sainte-Suzanne is located at the foot of the ramparts, on the path to the Poterne, overlooking the Grand Moulin and the Erve River.\u00a0 However, the gardens we saw might have been spectacular 500 years ago, but now looked rather overgrown.\u00a0 Maybe the original head gardener has died.<\/span><\/div>\n
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On the other hand, as we wandered aimlessly round town, we passed hundreds of rose bushes, all in flower.<\/p>\n

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We heard somewhere we were on the “route of the roses”.\u00a0 This maybe true.\u00a0 However, I can find no information from Mr Google to confirm this.<\/p>\n

So that’s the local medieval town inspected.\u00a0 Now Jublains, a Roman settlement a few miles northwest of camp.\u00a0 To be fair, as far as we are concerned, not a patch on Sainte Suzanne.\u00a0 The massive church in town is the snappily named, Eglise Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Proteus (we will come back to these enormous edifices later).\u00a0 It appears to have been built on top of ancient Roman thermal baths.\u00a0 Press an insignificant button on the wall of an excavated area and an indoors son et lumiere show lights up.\u00a0 I’m sure the commentary would have been interestingly descriptive as the various parts of the exposed baths were illuminated in turn.\u00a0 You will have to take their word for that.<\/p>\n

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The baths were discovered in 1870 when the community wanted to build a “modern” church on the site of the previous medieval one.\u00a0 There is also a museum of Roman antiquities, but we weren’t in the mood.\u00a0 We needed a country walk.<\/p>\n

Half way home, we stopped at the \u00c9tang de Gu\u00e9 de Sel.\u00a0 A promising 3.3 km walk around the lake.\u00a0 It started as predicted – a walk beside the lake.<\/p>\n

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But soon changed into a walk through a partially submerged forest.<\/p>\n

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If we did the walk again, we would do the first section there and back followed by the last (also lake-side) sector and back.\u00a0 The same distance as one full circum-navigation.\u00a0 Unless, of course, the temperature reached 33\u00b0C.\u00a0 But when does that happen in Northern France?<\/p>\n

It’s time for a new location.\u00a0 Sully-sur-Loire here we come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arriving at \u00c9vron nice and early – before the reception opened even – we were given the same pitch as a French family who arrived 10 minutes after us.\u00a0 But the site was largely empty.\u00a0 We moved one place left… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-france-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7598"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7627,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7598\/revisions\/7627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}