In the beginning

Like all good fairy stories perhaps I should begin by saying "Once upon a time" because that's exactly how it feels now, some 17 years later.
It was just a simple holiday in mid September. Suddenly we had some time free to escape the daily round and decided to spend 10 days in France. Advice came from all directions but a good friend who knew France well said,"At this time of the year, go south of the Loire and you are sure to have better weather.In fact better than that, go to the Dordogne".
That, and the possibility of visiting a few Chateaux en route and we were excitedly consulting routes, stop-overs (in Logis de France of course) and agents advertising Gites to rent. Before you could say "toute suite" everything was arranged. We would spend a couple of nights on the Loire and gently move down towards the North East corner of the Dordogne Region, having visited three or four chateau, carefully chosen, along the route.
With schoolboy French and a few subsequent visits, mainly en-route to camp in Italy, out came the phrase books, the maps, by now long out of date, and the Michelin Guide, even more out of date, but still valuable and packed with vital information, none of which I needed to use!
We booked the whole holiday with Brittany Ferries, sailing to Caen (Ouistreham) staying in one of their Gites and returning via St Malo.
Fair set the wind for France, or so I thought, and because it had been many years since we had crossed the Channel I assured my wife that she was a good traveller and would not need a travel tablet. First mistake. She was unable to leave the cabin for the whole crossing, but I did manage to feed her a sandwich under the door as we approaced the French coast.
The port of Ouistreham is a small friendly place and all we had to do was follow the directions out of the port and make for the open road south, carefully by-passing Caen.
Second mistake! which I discovered to my cost when negotiating the circuitous route through the suburbs of Caen, before eventually finding the carefully planned route towards the Loire an hour later.! Fortunately I had selected a few posible stop-overs along the route depending upon the distance we might travel, and so the first part of this exciting journey was completed and the night's rest was spent in a very comfortable Logis de France..... I had the feeling that this was going to be a very enjoyable experience.