Finally in France

I have commented before that Stella has a penchant for goat tracks.  She must have resented my little joke and held a grudge ever since.  Today  she avenged herself by taking us down Ram Lane.   Of the several narrow white roads marked on the map that went off in the rightish sort of direction she chose this particular one.  No!  A narrow, gravelly, single track road with high hedges and overhanging trees.  Should we back out onto the slightly less narrow road on a bend behind?  Or assume that it would improve?  We proceeded and the road deteriorated.  Pot holes, grass down the middle, broken surfaces and puddles of unknown depth.  Hedges left leaves wedged in the hinges on both sides, branches scraped the roof!  Fortunately no on-coming vehicles.  But – enough of that mini drama – we have learned our lesson about optimism and tiny lanes!   After a very tense  and very slow mile or two Ram Lane turned onto a real road.

More slightly-dashed optimism as we arrive at the Eurotunnel terminal – all trains too full to get an earlier one than booked.  It was the middle of half term after all.  So we had a superfood chicken salad in the terminal while we waited – after all, we are new to this and need a break until we get the hang of it:-)

We set Stella to “Toll Free” and roll off the shuttle.  Finally – foreignish soil under Portia’s  wheels!  Our plan was to get down to the fermette in Burgundy in three stops taking a route west of Paris for a change.  From all the books we have about French aires I had selected Montreuil-sur-Mer for a first stop.  It is several miles inland in fact but we had decided to avoid the actual coast, where there are many lovely beachside aires, due to rubbish weather – wet, windy and cold. Our optimism that it would miraculously become sunny and hot as we arrived in la belle France was dashed:-(

Finally, optimism is justified as we arrive at the aire in Montreuil to find eight beautifully laid out pitches, with a nice view, only two minutes walk from the town centre.  In the coach park adjacent is a frighteningly automatic toilet (free) and a service point for water and electricity for a small fee.  What a privilege!  We could not be happier:-) Thank you people of Montreuil! We are the third to arrive and it fills up later.  We arrive just after closed o’clock (2:15) and go food shopping.

We know Montreuil from camping trips when were young and flexible. It is historically significant for many things but most recently as the British Army Headquarters under General Haig in  the First World War.

Now it is an attractive, busy old town with butchers and bakers and traiteurs.  Mmmm – a good chunk of the lasagne changes hands for a few coloured beads and shiny mirrors. We manage a little walk around the town and its medieval ramparts before impending rain sends us vanwards.

Settling in for the stay we find Neil’s carefully researched wifi access devices work outside the UK – hurrah! The satellite still picks up the BBC – hurrah! We seem to run fine without electric hook up (but are miserly in our usage).  Water and heating are running nicely on gas. All neighbours are staying quietly inside out of the rain. Resisting the newly acquired lasagne we eat last night’s deferred chilli but allow ourselves the fresh baguette – maybe we are beginning to get the hang of it.

I pored over All the Aires and France Passion to plot our next destinations.  France Passion is an organisation that lists places where self sufficient travellers may park overnight for free.  These are farms, vineyards and other local producers of various things.  I would like to find one of these if possible.

Things discovered today:

• trust your instinct not your satnav. Sorry Stella:-(
• remember the third dimension when approaching vegetation – width, length and height!  Easy to forget the latter. Easy to lose a satellite dome!  We didn’t as it happened.
• entering geo-coordinates is more complicated than it looks.  Fortunately I know Montreuil is not on a small island some way off the coast of Norway and, see first point, I revert to navigating by postal address!  There is a complicated mathematical formula to convert one standard geo-coordinate format to another.   Life may be too short to fettle this. Don’t you just love standards?
• be grateful.

Finally! On the road

Lots of rushing about picking up random objects in the house, list ticking off, plant watering and we roll out of our street at 12:25 – only 25 minutes late.  Rather than get up very early  and get to an aire in France late we decided to stop overnight near Ashford for an earlyish tunnel crossing.  I identified several Britstops that would be fine but we chickened out and booked at a small Caravan Club site in Puckley – twenty-odd miles away.  Having finally sorted our own difficulties the French unions started a fuel blockade.  No!  Not this week, please!  Decided to go anyway.

• the satellite no longer worked!  No!  After much cursing and button pressing Neil moved the van two feet forward.  It started working. Amazing!  Nearby tree was so small it was hard to believe it could have been the problem but – apparently so.  This was especially pleasing as ….
• the CD player in the cab had stopped working:-(   It reads the disc and seems to play it but no sound comes out of the speakers – just one loud click.  Without the satellite it would have meant we would only have had french radio channels and downloaded music on the iPad for music.  And we have no speakers for the iPad.  So this needs attention.
• favour substantial slip-on shoes especially when parked on damp grass.  My trainers and Neil’s lace-ups are a pain for taking on and off when getting in and out with wet feet.  I had only flip-flops as an alternative and this was England in June so cold and wet! But it also meant…
• the new black carpet was a great idea!  In the distraction of setting off and settling in we forgot to take any pictures of the site so here is one of the black carpet that I forgot several posts ago:-)
• we are still in the frame of mind where we can excuse indulgences by agreeing that we are new to all this and need a break until we really get the hang of it!  We strayed from the path of abstemiousness instantly due to the proximity of a lovely local pub. Two steak baguettes and glasses of bitter were more tempting than the veggie chilli I had lovingly prepared the day before to take with us.
• we seem to use nearly half a tank of water a day  including two very small showers.
• always look all around the van before you leave and then behind you at the pitch before you finally drive off.
• mixed size bedding can be made to work to avoid duplication. What?  See below…

Weekend in Nottingham

After mechanical problems too tedious to mention and the most appalling customer service from Lowdham’s in Huddersfield we had to make many rearrangements to get Portia serviced and MOTed in time to get away – the new target date became 1 June.  This meant we had a couple of days and one clear weekend to try the van out and visit Neil’s daughter and partner before taking off.  So there was only one thing for it – we would park on their capacious drive in Nottingham and refamiliarise ourselves with the van in a handy, secure place.  This had another advantage: Erica and Tom have only just moved into their new house and do not yet have a spare bedroom furnished.  So we can now claim to be the the ultimately considerate guests bringing not only our own bedding, but our own bedroom!

First the practical discoveries:

• the fridge did not want to light on gas!  The very helpful people at Danums in Askern (where we eventually took Portia for the habitation service, having sworn that Lowdham’s would never lay hands on the van again) explained the foibles over the phone and it was OK.
• flat not being flat again.  Sleeping on a very slight slope is OK even with your head at the down end but not advised if you eat a big meal first.  We do have levellers now but could not be bothered to get them out.
• cruise control!  Neil has a new toy.
• the heating and hot water still worked.
• we still like being in the van
• Erica and Tom have a really  nice house and very good taste in interior decor.
• Erica and Tom have a downstairs toilet and shower just inside the front door!
• a man-cave seems to be a good thing.  In a house that is.

And we had a lovely weekend that included seeing Batman’s castle in Woolaton Park and opening belated Christmas and birthday presents  – yes, we had all been too busy to meet up for some time!  I forgot to take photographs:-( but have one, taken later, of the nice new bunny mugs being put to good use.

And so back home to pack and prime the van, visit the dentist one last time (hopefully), make travel bookings after the dentist visit, generally sort the house out for the house sitters during our several weeks away.

Preparation time……

Still a few days to go until Neil finally leaves work but a long weekend to enjoy in the van.  Well, near the van.  We squeezed it into the (shared) drive while the neighbours were away.  Portia is 2.42 metres wide, the gateposts 2.51. That gives 4.5 centimetres to spare either side – that’s 1.7 inches.  We decide it is doable.  I quite like reversing because you can do it really slowly and see straight down the side of van in the mirrors.  So I get the short straw and Neil gets to dart about shouting and gesticulating.  And here she is – with not a lot of room to spare!

The idea was to spend a day getting her set up and then spend two Easter days in a small site in Alkborough, North Lincolnshire.  It is good cycling territory there as it is very flat.  I now have my replacement bike and I can confirm that the problem was with the bike not with me.  (It was just too small with narrow handlebars which made it very wobbly to steer.)

In the end we decided to believe the weather forecast, which was threatening gales and heavy rain storms over the weekend, and stayed at home.  Good decision – that is hail blanketing the garden.  It meant we could continue with the jobs that needing doing before we set off.  Neil spent ages washing the van with bucket, hose and big shaggy orange mitt.  It is a big job.  I spent the time fitting the second piece of carpet and yet again forgot to take a photograph.

I also had a first stab at figuring out the logistics of what should go where in terms of different cupboards and lockers.  We have spent weekends away but taken so little stuff that most storage space went unused.  So, taking advantage of a voucher for quintuple supermarket points, we had bought all the kitchen store cupboard items a couple of weeks previously – tinned and dried that is.  I have made a list which I will store somewhere in future in case it might be useful.

All these weeks in storage are not doing Portia any good:-( Her van battery is suffering and refusing to let us fire her up.  After several visits to the garage to charge her up and with some help from Linda, who runs the place, we got her going.  Clearly Portia was pining for the open road again but we had several jobs that needed doing in the back.  Why not do them parked in the sun beside the sea?  Charge the batteries, look at the waves and enjoy a nice cup of tea.  Life does not get more exciting than this in February!  So we took the road north,  circled around the top of the North York Moors and followed the road down into Sandsend.  There is a lovely wooden chalet of a cafe on the promenade there, just beside a length of road with parking along the sea front (free October to March).

The wooden cafe

At first, being February, we expected to have the place to ourselves; being sunny we expected a few hardy dog walkers; then realising it was half-term, we feared the crowds would have turned out.  Ah well.

Our luck was in – there was a long enough space in the parking bay and Neil reverse parallel parked like a professional. Our luck went out – the sun disappeared.  There were the anticipated dog-walkers throwing sticks into the sea for their enthusiastic if foolhardy pooches,  a few well-wrapped families, but no crowds – clearly the chilly northern coast is an acquired taste.

View from the cafe

The cafe and our parking place have an impressive view of St Mary’s Abbey (of Dracula fame) in Whitby to the south, and the sandy beach with its cliffs to the north. The coastal part of the Cleveland Way national trail comes over those cliffs and wends its way to Filey Brigg in the south.  You can do the Sandsend to Whitby section on the beach if the tide is out – a great little walk.

A cup of tea and toasted cheese sandwich later we got on with our van-enhancing jobs.  Firstly, the carpet.  We had taken the beige carpet out as it was getting a bit marked.  It is now clean, wrapped and in the loft.  We bought a black and grey carpet runner and the dark colour looks great and does not show the scuffs and muddy marks.  I forgot to take a picture though so will have to add that at a later date.

A short break to admire the view….

The second job was to improve the functional storage of the wardrobe.  I doubt if we will want to hang any clothes up, except maybe a coat or two, and this is the largest storage space in the van.  I can see that things would just end up piled in on top of each other and a lot of rummaging would be required to find anything – not good for the temper!  We were reluctant to start drilling into the veneered wood of the walls to install shelves properly (despite having bought all the stuff already) and, with TV and satellite components on one wall, it would be difficult to locate more than one shelf in any case.

The solution is not beautiful, but very practical: a set of free-standing plastic basket-type shelves. As you can see, it  leaves room alongside for the table and space in front for last minute bunging when packing up. It even leaves a usable couple of inches of hanging space if needed. In line with our tradition of doing everything twice, we started assembling it before discovering it was too wide to go through the door. This was particularly annoying as I already knew this from all the careful measuring I had done before buying it.  Ah well.

Snow in the hollows

With a drizzle starting we set off home.  We continued south over the top of the moors just to see how Portia likes steep and winding roads.  She ate them up!  “Plenty of grunt” is apparently the technical term.  The weather meant the views of the moors and the Devil’s Punch Bowl were a bit greyed out but there was a sprinkling of snow lurking in the sheltered parts for light relief. We will come back to the moors before long to experience the sights visible from the Dark Skies sites.

Neil at the wheel

And that’s it for our day at the seaside.  Apart from finding a couple more levers that allow the seats to be adjusted to within a gnat’s crotchet of sheer perfection, there  were no startling new discoveries of a good or alarming kind today. Portia’s battery is full to brimming again and we cannot wait to get going for real.