Sunrise on a new chapter

Our first day aboard was heralded by the church bells giving us a call at 6:00 just to remind us that in an hour it would be 7:00.    We had completely forgotten about these pre-dawn wake up calls, and having fiddled till rather late and with a long drive ahead of us I really would have liked to have rolled over and gone back to sleep, but I rolled over and took a photo out of the window instead.

We would have liked to have just sat around all day smiling at each other, but business was calling and the prospect of sitting in an air conditioned car while the outside temperature hovered in the mid thirties wasn't unappealing, so after several coffees and a few strawberries we hit the motorways.

We had a choice of routes to Orleans, the shorter is about 480k's with around eight hour's travel time, so we chose the longer (motorway) 550 kilometre option which would take six if we stopped for lunch, and of course we did.  With cruise control set on the mighty one litre diesel, we shot across the country at the speed limit,  130 kilometres per hour, being overtaken every so often by all manner of craft, including the entire press contingent covering the Tour de France, who passed us as though we were parked.

Meanwhile at Celine and Dume's, the paintings had arrived just before us, and our first job was to release them from their travel-prisons.

One has suffered badly from an argument with a forklift, but the others are as they were when they left our house not two weeks but it seems a lifetime ago.

As I positioned each one in the garden around Dume's sculpture pieces, the surreal fog that has enveloped our lives from time to time of late, once again descended.   

Perhaps the early morning and the dizzyness of the journey contributed, but it just doesn't seem as though this is happening, perhaps we didn't wake when the church bells rang after all.