Now that we had collected all the required mail, and seen most of our friends in Moissac, it was time to head back north to get back in time for the meeting at the Dijon Prefecture, and do a few other things along the way. So after cleaning up the third floor apartment, we made a departure from Moissac around noon, with the intention of camping overnight along the way.

The motorways in France are very high quality (with a 130kph speed limit). They also have a plentiful number of Aires (roadside stops), about half of which are full service with fuel and food facilities (and sometimes much more) and half of which are more simple with toilet facilities, picnic areas and parking areas. Sometimes these parking areas are huge with hundreds of spaces for semi-trailers which camp overnight and also on weekends when most trucks are not allowed to travel on the motorways. But the one we pulled into today was something else. The cafe and shop area was housed in a very impressive steel and glass building, overlooking a tiered garden area.

This garden area cascaded down to an artiicial lake/fishing area. Not bad for a motorway rest area!

We continued on till we reached the Bel Air Campground near the Puy de Dome, where we had stayed previously on our first van trip from Moissac to Auxonne in June. We took advantage of the ping pong table near the pool (Rita took the honours this time) before grabbing a pizza from the cafe and enjoying it for dinner, as we said goodbye to summer in the shade of the van.