by 
The “Auberge de Thoire” was great (link here). It was a very slightly quirky (in a good way), very friendly with great home-cooked food (breakfast jams all own creations and evening meal was a short menu with a choice of 4 own “creations”), had enough creature comforts and everything worked well so a big thumbs from me for that, definite recommend there.
The trip progressed towards Oyonnax on small roads to get the tyres warmed up reaching the A404 after a while. Then was the usual plod down to near Vienne where I left the autoroute as was jammed up and proceeded on smaller roads to le Pouzin and form there onto Montélimar. From here I moved into the mountains feeling my way forward as my pre-programmed navigator route was behaving strangely and not routing for roads but as the bird flies. It was actually quite a throw-back to pre-navigator days when I always did routes via position of sun and dim recollections of the planned route points together with a dose of luck and guesswork, it often worked out quite well. Anyway, I eventually copped out and found a camping site via my app, put that into the navigator and proceeded as usual with the french bluetooth lady guiding me along… the human is a creature of habit I suppose. By now it was pretty hot so was glad to arrive mid-afternoon and get changed into shorts and flip-flops. I checked in at the campsite “Le petit bois” near Ruoms directly on the river and set up camp.
Whilst doing the motorway/autoroute part I came back to something I had been wondering about yesterday between bouts of motorway madness: “self-introspection” – is it better to have a “dialogue” with yourself or is it more constructive to mirror yourself in a dialogue or communication with others? Obviously, a dialogue with yourself has its own challenges but doing introspection via a third-party one needs to factor in the peculiarities of the third-party… I don’t know, the jury is still out on this one, I suspect that the best route is somewhere down the middle as it often is.
Anyway, am now set up at the camping site, I have decided to probably stay here for tomorrow as well and check out the area without all the luggage and do some shopping for tomorrow´s dinner (hoping to test my stove).
Ave! and love to all at home.
