Shock of the familiar

Le Shuttle is a bit like air travel, in that you get on the train in Calais, exit in a field near Folkestone, without any real sense of having travelled in between, unlike the ferry, where you can join your fellow passengers on deck to watch the White Cliffs get ever greyer the closer dear old Blighty looms. Exit from the shuttle is sudden and swift, border shenanigans having been completed on French soil, in no time at all you are trundling up the M20 being buzzed by East European pantechnicons stuffed with widgets heading for Birmingham. 

There follows a period of slight annoyance, an essential cultural adjustment to enable you to enjoy  life back home. Slight annoyance is a default setting if you are English, unless it's a run up to a General Election, then resigned outrage takes over. By the way, how unlucky is this, my 60th birthday is on May 7th - Election Day, how bad is that? I think I should get a personal apology from number 10, if the balloon faced moron actually wins.... on my birthday... 

Anyway back to the question of the slight annoyances of homecoming. Having spent three months in countries where I am entirely illiterate, then being able to read the stupid strap lines written on the backs of commercial vehicles counts as a slight annoyance. For god's sake, the first time in 1993 that some idiotic copywriter decided that a word-play on the verb 'deliver' was a pretty neat idea was annoying enough. It's still rampant twenty years on. Lorries no longer deliver crisps, or bathroom fittings or shock absorbers, no, they deliver 'world class quality' or 'unsurpassed customer care' or 'excellence in supply chain solutions'. It's dispiriting. Then there are helpful overhead advice signs - in April we are all cautioned  to 'take extra care while towing' as if in Spring the entire country wakes up to discover they are members of the Caravan Club. Before every service  area we are reminded that 'tiredness can kill.' Not that I am putting forward that being unable to read road signs is in itself a good thing. I will probably come to a premature sticky end somewhere south of Rijeka when my lack of Serbo-Croat leads me to sweep past the 'Beware, cliff edge' sign in blissful ignorance.

Really, we should have eased ourselves back into England, lingering around the blossom covered Kent Sussex border before venturing home. Instead we headed straight towards East London. Our elder daughter lives in Hackney, and after parking up in Lea Valley in no time at all we were catapulted into London Fields twenty-something hipster cafe culture. So far as cultural adjustment goes this was immersion therapy. Forget laid back Southern European  culture, this was high energy supercharged edgy England, not style over substance, but style as substance - suddenly I was feeling six decades too old. I am not saying that London is not a great city, but it prides itself on grime - its dirty old river - as the song goes. Socially it is some kind of human menagerie with a myriad of cultures, classes and cultural tribes all just about getting along. I can sense its energy but don't see its charm. It was great to see Sarah, and like many for young people, particularly in the creative industries, London is where the work is, whatever its challenges.

underneath the arches in the E5 Bakehouse

If you can have boutique hotels, can you have boutique loaves...just asking

So if you can have bright young things..can you be a bright old thing...just asking!

Sarah and prosecco..

Then on to Oxford to visit Matthew. After a trip through Spain and Portugal's famous university cities, Salamanca and Coimbra, it was interesting to visit Oxford. In the 15th Century all three were at the forefront of scholarship. All remain well respected venerable places of learning, but only Oxford remains in the top flight in the world rankings. We should be proud of British universities. Oxford is a beautiful, if somewhat frenetic place. We met Matthew in the centre and went to a great restaurant in Turl Street, which is one of my favourite spots Matthew has decided to take a long weekend and come home with us, which will mean that we won't be rattling around the house on our own.

Spring in Oxford

Near Turl Street, I think

Cod in a fennel with a shellfish broth - very good!

Our youngest, Laura certainly won't be around to greet us, she is in Tokyo to visit her boyfriend. They are off next week towards Mount Fuji and to see the cherry blossom and temples at Kyoto.  The intrepid Turpies strike again

Next stop for us, home. We have a lot to sort out, both in the house and the van. We also have a lot to absorb about our travels since September, and where we might go next year. So far as this trip is concerned, it sounds trite to say it was a dream come true, but since it was something we talked about in the decade before we retired, then we made it happen - how else might you describe it?

Home - and the car started first time after a two month break - brilliant

now the scary bit - opening the mail (ouch!)

Wissant

The route north from Normandy to Calais is a well trodden one for us, though avoiding toll motorways did take us through the countryside and forests of the Seine valley which is pleasant rather than spectacular. It's a pity we are not here in mid April as you can see that the apple blossom is just about to flower, and that just might tip the landscape beyond the merely pleasant.

The day and the miles rolled by and soon we found ourselves wandering around the familiar aisles of Auchan Boulogne. This time they have surpassed themselves with Spring wine deals to die for...or should that be die of!

BOGOF on the wine! You would never see that in Tesco!

Really, we should have a personally marked bay, given our customer loyalty.

Now we are parked in the Aire at Wissant, a little south of Calais, our tunnel crossing is around noon tomorrow. And that will be that, our first big trip will be complete. Maybe when l get home I will begin to make sense of it. For now a few statistics...

Miles travelled on the Autumn leg: 2404
Miles travelled this Spring:
To date - 2670
To go - 350
Probable final distance - 5420
Diesel 577 litres (Spring trip)
mpg. 23.2 - not great, factoring in the fuel in hand.
Accommodation cost per night - Spring leg - £10.35
Total daily living cost - everything apart from the new van battery and two big shops for wine to take home - around £38 per day, or £1200 per month. That's just about within budget, it's do-able....where next?

Le Bec-Hellouin

A steep path through the woods leads from the camp site down to the village of Le Bec-Hellouin. As well as being a pretty half-timbered place itself, it contains the remains of a large monastery.

In many ways the layout of the village around a small green looked very English, and you realise how what we regard as a distinctly English settlement might well have been a Norman import.

The English connection was also apparent in the monastery, if I read the signs correctly then the place's mother church seems to have been the cathedral at Canterbury. Most of the original buildings apart from a single Norman tower, look as if they were remodelled or at least incorporated into 18th century structures. Nevertheless it exudes that sense of timeless tranquillity that you find in many monastic sights. 

The village looked and sounded less idyllic, partly because most of the roads were half excavated - drain renewal? - also the local dogs seemed to be having a 'I can bark louder than you' competition, and the minor road through the place was bendy enough to attract suicidally minded bikers, out for a bank holiday thrill. 

All in all though, it is a pretty place. We wandered about, took a few photos, agreed the 2 restaurants were out of our price range, then walked back up the steep path to the campsite.

N roads North - Richelieu to Le Bec-Hellouin.

From Richelieu, there is no straightforward way north. Your route  is determined by the places where the Vienne and the Loire have been bridged. We zigzagged our way to Saumur, and only after 120kms or so picked up the D328 which provides a free route north towards Normandy, parallel to the A28 toll autoroute. Our road was quite empty, but motorhomes heading south passed us at regular intervals. Was it my imagination that their customary acknowledgement of a raised hand was performed with a little more vigour in celebration of the fact that not only were we all headed elsewhere, but the road was free! 

We travelled south on this road over thirty years ago on our first road trip in France, previous to that we had used pubic transport or cycle-camped in Brittany. It was a big adventure in our little Renault 4.  Though we did not get as far as the Mediteranean, the Medoc beaches, Cahor and the upper Lot valley seemed exotic to northerners like ourselves who had never seen a surfboard, visited a vineyard, heard a cicada or experienced the deep blue sky and dagger-sharp shadows of a southern summer. 

Since that time the road has been improved, mainly by the replacement of crossroads by roundabouts. These occur once every five or six kilometres and slow up your progress considerably. They have made roads in Northern France much safer however, by removing that mysterious priorité a droite rule that so bewildered English driver a few decades ago.

France changed in the decade that followed our first visits, due largely to the programme of modernisation that Mitterand initiated. Not only rond-points popped up like mushrooms on the edge of every town, but MacDonald's, retail sprawl, and Flunch. Now, I suppose bizarrely designed lamposts, traffic calming chicanes and suspension wrecking speed-bumps, rusty modern road-side sculpture and a predilection for plastic chairs and orange and lime green decor are as much hallmarks of Frenchness as pongy pissoirs, Deux-chevaux in faded denim blue, the whiff of Gallois and sun- baked peeling shutters were to our parents. 

What else have you to do but reflect about the passing of time as France's endless plains and rolling hills go by. It was a beautiful looking Spring day, alternatively clear blue, then banks of clouds from time to time drifting through. It was a day for driving rather than walking, for outside it was distinctly chilly, with a raw northerly breeze discomforting we softies from a southern winter.

Finally we reached the bocage, turned down a single track road through a lovely valley of timbered houses and slender poplars, then up a narrow lane through woods. I had to do a three point turn to get Maisy around one of the hairpin bends. So we arrived after a very long days drive at camping Le Clos St. Nicholas. It's described in the ACSI book a place to enjoy the countryside in peace and tranquility, and indeed it is. I am looking forward to a break from driving tomorrow. Then it's an aire in the Pas de Calais and Le Shuttle on Wednesday. 

Nice ACSI campsite at  Le Bec-Hellouin - but the access road is winding, narrow and steep....

It really was as cold as it looked

N roads North - Bordeaux to Richelieu.

We are trying to avoid toll motorways. Since 55 mph is all Maisy can manage without guzzling diesel, we can do  that on main roads, so paying the motorway tolls would not get us to our destination any quicker and it would cost quite a bit as the class 2 vehicle charge seems to be almost twice the price of a car. From Bordeaux the N10 runs directly north, it is dual carriageway most of the time. We stopped to stock up on some wine to take home at a big Auchun on the outskirts of Angouleme. At Poitier we branched off towards Richelieu, where we had spotted quite a good free aire.

 The facilities are basic, A tap and a hinged WC emptying point, but the location is pretty, next to the walls of Richelieu's great park where the eponymous Duc once lived. Though the actual chateau is long gone, the Ideal town he built next to it remains much as it was in the mid  17th Century.

Although the aire was a little bit off the main route, it does make for an interesting one night stop. 

Next morning was Easter Sunday. Sunday mornings are a bit of a ritual here, and this was no different, but perhaps enacted with a touch more Gallic élan than usual. The gaggles of brightly Lycra garbed male cyclists, out for their weekly early morning run swept by a little more swiftly and the chat amongst them sounded even more like a gaggle of geese than usual. The queue at the boulangerie as you would expect spread onto the pavement, but the chat seemed more animated, and even strangers were greeted like long lost amis. The fleuriste was doing good business, and I was surprised to see how many people at the church across the square were for headed to mass. France seems like a largely secular country, but in its rural heartland perhaps the old conservative catholic influences remains stronger. So far as a heartland of La Gloire, then you would be stretched to find a more archetypal spot than Cardinal Richelieu's home town.

Camping du Lac Le Village, and the art of the post-modern shower.

The Bordeaux city camp site is well placed for both visiting the city and as a stopover on the way to Spain, so was quite busy. It is in the process of being upgraded, and the rather swanky new office and reception building was commissioned during our stay. We checked into a portacabin, but checked out through the new chalet style building. The site had a big new lakeside restaurant, and the pitches have been re-located around a series of ponds with ducks and other water birds. It's very nice.

Well, nice apart from the new sanitaraire, which are really quite bizarre. Even by French standards of social engineering the facilities are odd. Imagine two moderately sized Scandinavian style pitched-roof wood pavilions standing face to face, with a covered tiled foyer connecting the two. The toilets, on one side are unisex, which is quite normal these days, though I do wonder if the un-screened urinals by the door really do delight women users!

 It's the design of the shower block opposite which is really quirky.  Unisex shower cubicles and lavbos line the walls, including nice touches like a family shower and washbasin closet big enough to spruce-up grubby toddlers - I remember these were a bit of a boon in the days when we camped with small kids. The odd design decision was to site a square block of washing-up sinks right in the middle of all the showers. 

Now I suppose there is no reason why pots and pans should not get washed in the same place as humans... and this would be fine if everyone was well mannered, but they are not. Perhaps I am just becoming old, intolerant and illiberal, judge for yourself after I have recounted my 'washing the BBQ anecdote'.....

I arrived with a big pile of dishes and the grill pan off the Cadac, this takes a fair amount of elbow grease with the pan scrub to get it clean. I was just filling the sink with hot water when a couple in their thirties breezed in and disappeared into the family shower. I don't mind that really, I guess, but if you are going to have a tender moment in a public space, a little modesty would be nice.

 Now I am not saying that the pair were being gross or 'making out', just that the running commentary concerning the delights of mutual back scrubbing, less than two metres from my equally enthusiastic, but silent pan scrubbing seemed utterly bizarre. My discomfiture was increased by the fact that the couple's 'wash-in' was conducted in ardent whispers, reminiscent of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin's infamous one hit wonder.

Perhaps the block's architect was an enthusiast for French post-modern philosophy, and having read Michel Foucaults various attempts to de-construct and confront the hidden patterns of socially conservative bourgeois behaviour, felt that the design of a camping municipal  shower block offered him a similar opportunity. If that was so, then, with the assistance of Monsieur and Ms. Loofah, he confronted my bourgeois assumptions admirably. Next morning I washed-up the breakfast dishes in the van.

Bordeaux

Three consecutive days travelling is really our limit. It's not only the capacity of the van's tanks and leisure batteries, but my capacity to drive day after day that limits us. Heading north though, we broke the three day rule - Ampudia, Burgos, Zarautz, Biscarosse, not huge daily distances, but still tiring, so it's not really surprising that we felt a bit zonked when we finally stopped for a couple of days in Bordeaux.

Not that we sat about and relaxed, within two hours of arriving the laundry was sorted. It was warm enough to have a BBQ, and reacquainted ourselves with French wine after a few week of Spanish only.

Next day we were on the bus straightaway to have a look at Bordeaux, one of those French cities we have shot past on many occasions on the way to somewhere else. On the 'let's visit places we've never been to' rule; then it's one more ticked off the list. 

The day started with a requisite 45 minute wait in the Orange shop, a good old rant with a fellow English customer - but finally Gill managed to talk the manager in person - a rare honour.  He confirmed that the SIM sold to her in the Bayonne branch was unsuitable, but assured her that this was 'normale'! Then he discovered that the SIM bought back in October had not expired as we had been told, and he  simply credited with it €10. We were not offered a refund on the duff SIM from Bayonne, though..... Orange France, always a lamentable experience!

The Orange queue....

In many respects  Bordeaux looks like the archetypal French city. Big squares, wide avenues and grand buildings - Paris-style - in uniform white-stone, classically proportioned, but ornamented with the usual frilly bits.

The river fromtage looks very Parisian

Then there are always a few unfortunate modern additions too.

Large scale monuments celebrate the virtues of La Republique with overblown, and slightly monstrous public sculpture.

The hidden medieval centre miraculously escaped the Enlightenment remodelling and now has intimate squares and artsy cafés, full of artsy people being intimate.

We spotted this cafe, it seemed to offer the best value, but circumnavigated the area three times before we got a table, but it was nice, if not outstanding food, and friendly staff - which is not always the case.

Like in Valencia, cars are virtually banished from the city centre, but have been replaced by trams that glide about silently down pedestrianised streets, shared between people on foot, cycling, in-line skating,skateboarding and Segway tours. It may be greener, but it's equally alarming and stressful for pedestrians as having motor traffic. 

It was an interesting day, especially as the integrated tram and bus route took us through the citiy's more modern outskirts - very planned, an attempt at le Corbusier nouveau, really. No matter whether the ruling party is of the left or right, France, to me, always feels like a socialist republic. My head approves of the idealism, but my heart is not in it, I am too much of an Anglo-Saxon individualist to warm to such uniform social planning as we saw in the suburbs of Bruges and Bordeaux Lac.