Four hops to home (the elephant in the van)

Hop one: Sully-sur-Loire to Neufchatel-en-Bray.

Topic of the moment concerned the impending stormy weather. Today is forecast to be a tad stormy whereas the middle of the week promises to become positively tempestuous. It seems to make sense to do a longish drive now as the windier it is the less comfortable the van becomes. 

In fact despite dire warnings, apart from a short stretch between Orleans and Chartres when we were buffeted by a blustery hail shower, it was an uneventful 320km trundle to Neufchatel-en-Bray.

Perhaps the most exciting moment was being delayed for a few moments by Gilet Jaunes protesters on a roundabout in Rouen. 

We were confronted by a shocking sight. In some previous outbreak of crazed mob violence the protesters had destroyed the cartoon style figurines of black and white cows which once graced this obscure roundabout. Rouen's 'cow roundabout' has featured in out mental map of France for decades, and now it was gone, an unlikely victim of political violence - 'mere anarchy is loosed upon the world', as Yeats once wrote. Anyway the protesters themselves seemed like a jolly bunch and let us past with a cheery wave.

It was an evening of sunshine and scudding clouds when we arrived at Neufchatel Aire. Despite the single digit temperatures we donned coats and hats and took a short stroll up the via verde. No matter what the season, the landscape is very pleasant hereabouts. 

Anything to avoid on-screen clicking at the moment. Our glorious PM has been in Strasbourg today in a last ditch attempt to rescue her deal before tomorrow's 'meaningful vote' in the Commons. Brexit shenanigans have been 'the elephant in the van' for the last couple of years. I have done my utmost not to go on about it on the blog, but as matters stagger chaotically towards the crunch article 50 leaving date in 17 days time it becomes ever more difficult to ignore it. We do try though.

Distraction strategy number one, find a particularly nice bottle of wine in the garage, sample it, then post somewhat pretentious comments the experience on social media.

Distraction strategy number two, engage is 'ignore the elephant' pleasantries. For example, Gill poses the question, "Name three things you are actually looking forward to when we get home...."

Tricky. After a momentary silence all I could come up with was:

1. a bath

2. a haircut

3. tidying the garden in preparation for summer.

These are hardly uplifting reasons for driving a thousand miles north through gloomy weather.

Gill's list was no less mundane:

1. More room inside the house 

2. Watching the birds in the garden

3. Being somewhere familiar for a while.

You can see why we prefer out wandering existence.

Hop two: Neufchatel-en-Bray to Watten

The wind and rain continues, now it has been blessed with a name - Storm Gareth. Winds were forecast to be less intense inland so we planned a route north from Abbeville to St. Omer avoiding the exposed Somme estuary and the high chalk hills around Boulogne. The D928 is not a route we have taken before, it crosses pleasant rolling countryside. It's a quiet road with few trucks, it would be an enjoyable drive on a sunny spring day. Today it was wet and dull but at least the dangerous gales never quite materialised 

Our resident elephant has grown bigger this evening after we entertained ourselves by watching The Commons vote down May's Brexit deal. It was an international occasion with Jackie in France and Sarah in Portugal both chipping in on WhatsApp as they viewed the live feed too. Apart from a shared WTF! reaction there a was a general consensus that the star of the show had to be John Bercow; a new role model for all of us, whenever life gets tough just bellow 'ORDER! ORDER! ORDEEER! It seems to work.

Hop three: Watten to Cité Europe.

I woke a couple of times in the night, gales rocking van, rain hammering on roof, pillock across the way running a generator. In the morning not only was it single digit temperatures but also very draughty. In better weather the aire here would be a good place to stay, less than an hour from Calais, flat hardstanding with well designed service point. 

The place too is interesting, a nineteenth century industrial village built alongside the wide canal. The waterway is still used for commercial traffic, which is good to see. As for the architecture, very red brick, but not entirely utilitarian. - for some reason it reminded me of the outskirts of Wigan.

The main road to Calais runs alongside the motorway. Lorries were stacked-up all along the hard shoulder. Gill checked her phone. All crossings had been cancelled due to the stormy weather. We should be ok tomorrow as we are booked on the tunnel.

We arrived at the Auchun supermarket in Coquelles just before noon. We always do a wine shop before we cross back to the UK. With a 'no deal' still possible, Sarah WhatsApped from Lisbon, "Will you be stockpiling?" What do you reckon?

There is dedicated motorhome parking area at the Cité Europe shopping complex near the tunnel terminal. Surprisingly we have not used it before. It's ok. We ended up eating lunch at Flunch. We used these fast food cafeterias often when travelling with the kids. It just shows how our standards have changed. The food is terrible. We need to apologise to all three of them for the years of historic gastronomic abuse. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the shopping mall. I quite like over-designed shopping malls, the more kitch the better. Top notch is Manchester's Trafford Centre which looks like a golden age Hollywood movie set gone horribly wrong. Cité Europe is pretty good though, more a strange mix of Jetson style modernity with the sinister ambiance of one of J. G. Ballard's later novels.

Later, another evening watching the BBC House of Commons feed, bemused by what is happening, awaiting Laura Kuensberg's Tweets to explain it to we lesser mortals. She says she's 'never seen anything like it'. What hope is there for the likes of us? Anyway, among all the chaos it appears the Commons have put two fingers up to a no deal Brexit, good news, except the Mogg made the point that Commons motions (a disturbing concept) have no legal force, so we are still headed towards crashing out unless the exit bill is amended or Article 50 revoked. The Mogg, what a horrible human being!

Pachaderm update: our pet elephant has grown even bigger and eaten all of the crisps we bought in Mercadona. She has a name now - 'Nellie'. You remember the song - how she packed her trunk and ran away from the circus... We all remember how that ended...trump, trump, trump.

Perhaps if Nellie had understood her fate at the outset she may have opted to remain in the big top...

Hop four....and then home.

Today dawned with a full-on storm rocking the van about like a yacht rounding Cape Horn. Eurotunnel texted us at seven in the morning to instruct us not to join the lorry queue. Apparently as well as the weather affecting Channel services French customs have taken industrial action. We should take the hint, read the runes, note the augurs, turn around. At a steady 150 miles per day in five days time we could be on a Minoan Ferry heading to Patras....

A bit of a mystery this morning, Ellie has vanished. We can only assume she is conforming to the lyrics and heading for the jungle. There used to be one hereabouts in Calais I seem to recall.

So, no need to mention about you- no-what, even though you-know-who is threatening to pop the question again for the third time...that's it I won't mention it again, I promise.

From where we parked overnight we could see passport control through the white mesh of the 25m high anti-migrant fencing. At most it was about 150m distant. It might as well have been on the moon. Due to the truck jam all access from Cité Europe to the Tunnel junction had been coned-off and police cars parked across the road. After a failed attempt to reach the terminal via Calais we changed tack and drove south towards Boulogne on the A16 for two junctions until the lorry stack was intermittent enough to allow us to use an interchange to make a U turn. It worked, we found the one Eurotunnel access road that remained open for non commercial traffic.. 

By now we had missed our scheduled crossing and was allocated one an hour later. This proved necessary as the action by the Doannes had halted all trucks, but every other vehicle was being checked thoroughly. Progress was painfully slow. 

Still, finally an hour late we were on the train. Gill found an article in the LA Times which explained that the French industrial action had been dubbed a 'Brexit simulation'. The French Customs officers 'go slow' was designed to demonstrate that Brexit would create more work for them, so therefore they needed a pay rise. Nice try! 

"Oh, hello Nellie, there you are!"

There is a certain irony to all of this. We purposely planned our return in mid-March to avoid Brexit related disruption, only to have our journey disrupted by a practice run.

Kent was a mirror image of the Pas de Calais. On the south carriageway of the M20 all cars had been diverted at Maidstone. Only trucks were allowed to proceed, then had been stacked up in a 15 mile queue from Ashford towards the Channel ports. The motorway has been adapted to allow this with a metal barrier along the third lane of the northbound carriageway to facilitate an instant contraflow. All engineered as part of 'no deal' preparations I presume.

As we were heading north the chaos on the other side of the M20 did not affect us. A normal journey - fast but busy around the M25; slow though Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire (making the M1 'smart'... still); usual grumble in Toddington Services - litter, terrible food, why is everyone tattooed...in two days time it will be the new normal.

Home at dusk. With Laura house-sitting, the place was warm and she had cooked us a meal. All good, apart from the car battery seems to be flat and Laura needs a lift to Stoke station tomorrow morning.

So, a roof, a bed you can sit up in, a bath, a dishwasher - but the same view every day, well apart from watching the Spring perform its usual green revolution in the ancient woodland at the back of the house. A nice prospect.

Perhaps we should have booked the ferry..

After a few hours of driving up the empty, ruler-straight roads in middle of nowhere France, on a dull day in early March, through one decrepit small town after another, as driver's arse ache sets in it is not surprising that the alternative route home - the ferry from Santander - increasingly seems a more sensible choice. It is only the cost that puts us off, but in truth we can afford it. So why make a an irrational choice deliberately? 

If I knew the answer to that question the news right now would make so much more sense, but I don't, so I will continue hanging onto the steering wheel watching the dull landscape of the Allier valley fill the windscreen, then observe it disappear behind us in the wing mirrors like grubby water down a plughole. Time has slowed, I glance at the clock on the dashboard - 14.05; I drive for what seems like half an hour, then check the time again - 14.09.....groan.

Occasionally the tedium was alleviated by desultory groups of yellow vest protesters gathered at roundabouts. Only the hardcore remain now, it no longer appears like a mass protest. The gaggles are overshadowed by the large yurt like structures that they once gathered around, built presumably to house protest essentials like placards, flags, gas masks, petrol cans, picnic tables, and BBQs. Gill's sister who lives in northern France reckons the the whole thing has become a bit of a weekend social ritual for the remaining gilet jaunes.

What followed was a variety of half baked attempts to delay the onset of boredom related mental collapse. What has been interested about today? I asked myself chirpily. Well, last night we got a pitch overlooking the river at the Aire in St. Pourcain-sur-Sioule.

The bare trees at twilight made an interesting pattern, like a monochrome Jackson Pollock. When I pointed this out to Gill, enthusing particularly about the blotches the crow's nests made, she looked at me pitifully and pointed out the blotches were in fact mistletoe. Well, botany never was my strong point.

Then this morning a group of fishermen turned up to entertain us. They were the real deal, waders, khaki multi-pocketed jackets, battered hat - they took up position midstream, casting into the deeper pools. One caught a big trout almost straightaway. No sports fishing here, he did not throw it back, but popped in a bag for later.

Whenever I see people fly-fishing I think about my dad. He considered the sport ridiculous, but spent most of his working life as a split-cane rod builder. Some famous people fly fished with rods my dad built - Prince Phillip, The Duke of Gloucester and many other members of 'The Lord's', The King of Norway, Frank Sinatra and his 'Rat Pack' associates... In the late 1960s fibreglass replaced spit-cane, my Dad was made redundant and ended his working life as a night telephonist. He was a realist. At least BT have a pension scheme, he would say.

However, today's main topic of conversation in the cab concerned the weather forecast. It would seem that over the weekend and into next week it is going to get very windy in the north of France. Gales and motorhomes are not a good mix. Over lunch in some god forsaken roadside parking spot south of Bourges we considered the possibilities. Sunday is forecast to be the worst day, so we decided to stop for the next couple of days in the ACSI site at Sully Sur Loire.

So, that is where we are now. After days of driving we took a walk along the riverside path, then through some mixed woodland that has been developed as a nature reserve. It still looks wintry here, not just the bare trees, but the last few snowdrops are still in flower. Some blossom is coming out, but you can tell it is not properly spring-like when the most colourful thing in the woods is lichen.

The rest from driving everyday is welcome. Also a decent shower. We can manage three days 'wilding' but that is our limit. I can't imagine how people manage to live off-grid most of the time. Perhaps some of the bigger A class vans - Cathargos and the like have more spacious bathrooms, and bigger tanks. It is the water carrying capacity and the fact that the bathroom is little bigger than a wardrobe which limits us to the three nights off-grid I think. In the end forever living in a car-park would begin to get us down too I suspect. All that being said, the prospect of living in the house by the end of next week is not something that excites me. For five of the last six months our home had been this 7m x 2.5m box, it does feel like home, the ultimate room with a view.

France in Winter

For three seasons France is a delightful place to tour around by motorhome. In winter it becomes tricky. Many campsites close and municipal authorities turn-off the water at most of the public service points. Reviews on Campercontacts and Park-for-night can help, but it's a matter of luck finding a recent entry for any particular locality.

Yesterday was a case in point. The parking area we used in 2014 by the Lac du Saligou had been relocated to another part of the lakeside country park and the service point had gone. Luckily we we had enough water to see us through the night and did not require a grey water or WC emptying point. 

Next morning Gill consulted 'Park-for-night' and found a nearby service point. It was new, located at the E Leclerc petrol station on the motorway junction at Clermont l'Herault. Reviewers mentioned it was a 'Flot Blu'. So we headed there more in hope than expectation having had little previous success with these automated service points. They have potential disfunction in-built as a design feature. A few machines are free, some are coin operated, most require tokens. Sometimes these are available at a nearby tourist information office or municipal camping receptions. If you are planning to motorhome in France regularly keeping a stash of 'jeton' somewhere is a good idea. We have been in Spain for months so we hadn't 

In fact the much vaunted Flot Blu was not located in the service station but in the corner of the automatic car wash place next door. This is where having a qualified geographer on board comes into its own, without Gill's iron resolve we would never have found it. Of course the thing wouldn't work, the water was turned off, the tokens provided by the car wash guy would not work and none of his many keys would open the door to turn the water on. Luckily we had happened upon a rare thing, a helpful French worker - he found us an alternative source of 'eau potable' on the edge of a nearby field, though we did have to lug the water to the van in our 20 litre jerrycan. So, in the end we got sorted despite the useless Flot Blu.

Onwards, 250kms north up the A75, a spectacular drive through wild country. No matter how many times you cross the viaduct at Millau it is impossible not to be a little awestruck by the sight, a truly beautiful construction, the marriage of form and function transcends mere engineering, it is a work of art.

The same cannot be said of the visitor centre at the northern end of the bridge which manages to encapsulate everything in French culture associated with pompous over-design; for example the artful, subtlety lit displays all about cheese. More fundamental to the visitor experience, it is regretable that the same level of engineering nous that built the bridge had not been applied to the sanitary arrangements. It's quite important not to apply design principles that inspired the Trevi fountain to the toilet flush mechanism.

More bare hills and empty sky. The highest peaks of the 'Parc Volcan' were dusted with snow. The A75 climbs then dips crossing the valleys of the Tarn, Aveyron and Lot before heading towards the upper valley of the Allier. We were heading to an aire a few kilometres north of St Flour, in the Cantal.

We knew nothing of our planned destination apart from its name and two facts gleaned from Campercontacts reviews, the aire's service point worked in winter and the village had a much praised cheese shop. Massiac boasted both these delights and in fact was a rather pleasing place altogether. It's appearance is somewhat drab and dour, but then hill towns often are.

It seemed like a thriving little place with excellent local shops, cafes and specialist patisseries advertising 'macarons' - which appeared to be local delicacies, along with Cantal cheese of course.

I was drawn to a small museum dedicated to a local artist -Elise Rieuf. Sadly the place only opened on Sundays during the winter months, but from the pictures on the poster she seemed to be a skilled practitioner working in a post-impressionist figurative style. I tracked down the museum's somewhat basic website from a link on Google maps.

It contained more examples of  Rieuf's work and information about her life. It is a remarkable story which took her from this obscure Auvergne town to Paris, Germany, the French Quarter of Shanghai, then a life of travel around Europe, all reflected in her work. .Elise Rieuf is a significant example of a pioneering independent woman determined to live a life on her own terms.

The most famous artist from this area in France is Pierre Soulages. His studio in Rodez has a museum dedicated to his work. So far as the masters of mid-twentieth century painting go, aged 99, he is more or less the last one standing. His dark abstract canvases are the epitome of mid 20th century avante garde, utterly different to the intimate figurative paintings of Elise Rieuf.. The history of last century's 'realists' is an intriguing one, not all of them rejected Moderism simply because they were conservatives, but preferred using traditional methods to explore the realities of the society around them. Women artists like Elise Rieuf or Laura Knight in Britain are the equivalents, I think, to literary figures such as Virginia Woolf or Simone de Beauvoir. They lived their lives in deliberate opposition to Beauvoir's observation concerning received cultural norms: 

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.

One day perhaps I will get to visit both the Soulages and the Rieuf museums and finally to decide if my hunch is right - that Soulages' work conforms to de Beavoir's assertion but Rieuf's quietly confounds it.

So, there is more to Massiac than an impressive cheese shop and 'artisnal macarons'.The big wide world and remote places are idiosyncratically entwined; the small-scale can conceal big ideas; winkling them out is what makes travel fascinating.