And so it was time to return to old Blighty. Simple plan, head to Citée Europe, looks around, have lunch, shop at Carrefour, then head to the Le Shuttle terminal. Simple, what could go wrong.

With the shortest drive of the holiday we were hit by bad weather. In two minds about wandering round old Rouen (if we could find parking), rain and the predicted increase left us with no choice but to leave. Thing is, Calais is not the greatest of areas to kill time, especially as the plan was to hit Citée Europe on the final day before catching Le Shuttle back to the UK.

It has been a few years since I last went on holiday and the same for my mother who last travelled with my late father the year before the COVID global pandemic. This year we’ll be travelling together, partly following a route my parents would formerly have taken with stops and way points that had been their traditional holiday for their last 3 or 4 years of summer travel.

It is somewhat cruel to consider Rouen as an Industrial city and Tours as one for tourists. Both have old towns and large impressive cathedrals. It seems to be an impression wrongly built up within my family over the decades with Rouen being little more than a pass through to else where, or the host for a drunken camping trip when I was a young student. There are differences though.

There is so much more to Cognac, yet at the same time so little as it is all about the distilleries, however with Tours you have both the old and new, in theory satisfying both locals and tourists alike. Still, this counts for little until you have moved from one to the other.

In my mind I had this day as one of the longer journeys of the holiday, but our first leg back north was not. However due to all the driving round Gascony I would need an additional top up while at the same time being reminded about the truths of Sundays in France.

A morning trip to the Marciac jazz festival was always on the cards, however as we would have to pass through Bassoues on the way there, a side trip for day time photos and possibly a wander up the tower was also called for.