Checkpoint Charlie

We woke early after a disturbed night. The funiculaire station aire is, as the name suggests, on top of a cliff and very airy. The weather in the town below may be conforming to the forecast 'fresh breeze' but up here it is blowing a gale. It's not comfortable in a motorhome in these conditions, unless you have caravan style steadies the vehicle rocks a little, and the bike cover, only a couple of feet behind the bed, flaps about annoyingly.

I felt a bit grumpy next  morning, but an early start was not a bad thing as we needed to get to Dieppe by mid morning to give us plenty of time at the port. We figured that dealing with the extra paperwork might slow the check-in. It was good we decided that we were embarking from Dieppe where there are only three sailings per day, whereas Dover can have more than that in an hour in the middle of the day which is must result in longer queues at the border control given all the additional checks, some temporary due to Covid, others more permanent such as those at passport control resulting from Brexit.

It's a good idea to avoid the Dover Calais crossing at the best of times. In our experience the UK border at Dover is the most overtly aggressive we have ever encountered. Admittedly we have never tried to enter Chad, Myanmar or the People's Republic of North Korea, but in terms of random body searches, infra-red vehicle anti-migrant scans, visits by drug hunting Labradors, random vehicle searches by customs and excise officers, scary warning signs about tyre stingers, and bored looking policemen standing around casually holding machine pistols - over the years we've noted all these things in Dover, but they're conspicuous by their absence elsewhere or perhaps simply more covert. Not just in Europe, but the USA, Japan, Singapore, The People's Republic of China, Australia, New Zealand -  all these places in our experience have had low key border controls compared to the UK.

Anticipating slow progress at the ferry port we planned to get on the road early. In fact it was not delays at the border which proved to be the problem, it took far longer than we anticipated just to to exit the aire. There are two parking areas for motorhomes next to each other. Both charge €7 for a 24 hour stay. The one we were in was the smaller of the two and had a single entrance barrier operated by a code. This was used both to enter and exit the area. Just to complicate matters further the motorhome service point had been built directly opposite the barrier and just to make matters a tad  trickier the small 'waiting bay' next to it was about two metres shorter than the average sized van so its front end jutted out into the road. Exiting the aire more than one at a time was challenging. This resulted in complete chaos around 10am when half a dozen vans decided to leave at the same time. 

Things would have sorted themselves out eventually, however the service point also served the larger aire down the road and vans from there started to queue up too, spilling out onto the main road. We just sat tight and watched the chaos escalate from a minor 'bouchon' to a potential international incident. In the end no one got beyond the extreme fuming stage and after 20 minutes or so we managed to negotiate our way slowly through randomly parked vans and head for Dieppe port.

Of the many silly slogans bandied about by Leave during the referendum, the idea that we needed to 'take back control of our borders' has to be the most delusional. For years entry to the UK has been the most aggressively policed in Europe, well, apart from Russia and Belarus perhaps. Brexit and the pandemic may not in themselves resulted in extra security paraphernalia at our borders but it has upped the ante so far as paperwork is concerned and slowed things down considerably. This morning it took over 10 minutes to complete the checks for a single vehicle on the French side in Dieppe. Passports, Covid vaccination certificates, the test certificate from the French authorities and evidence that we had completed our UK passenger locator form  were all checked 

carefully by DFDS staff at the  first barrier, then again at a second barrier by immigration officials who also took away our passports briefly so they could be stamped. Then it was time for two border guards to search the moho for migrants, one of them ordered me out of the cab and waved a wand around me in case I had a sub-machine gun hidden beneath my hoodie. Gill must have looked less suspicious. Onto the ferry we trundled assuming all checks now had been completed. No, some hapless crew member had been placed at the top of the stairs to check passenger's handbags and daysacs as they boarded. Why?

 

The dysfunctional testing regime put in place by the UK government has effectively suppressed the usual summer rush to sunny France, which is what it aimed to do probably. I estimate that there were fewer than two dozen vehicles boarding this morning's ferry, at times it seemed we were the only people onboard, it was eerily quiet. We departed on time. What shenanigans await  I wondered when we disembark in Newhaven?

Four hours later ..

Showed passports, waved straight through, all our details had been entered at Dieppe. It's Dover docks that operates like the barbican of fortress GB,  other smaller entry ports are less aggressive, though the regulations are as stringent they are managed in a more personable way. Maybe using Newhaven is the way forward.

The question remains was our ten day break worth all the additional bureaucracy and cost? Probably not, we should have rearranged our commitments at home and taken a three week break instead. However, part of the reason for doing it was as a dry run before we take off to Spain for a couple of months later in the autumn. We certainly feel more confident about a navigating the Covid testing requirements for travel, so we have achieved that objective. Aside from that, the few days we spent cycling on the Avenue Verte were memorable, a brief 'fix' of picture book summer in France. Maybe that alone more than compensates for the costs of tests and the tedious form-filling.

Above all Normandy felt peaceful and unhurried. Not so England. After an overnight stay in a CL site near Lewes we headed home. It took over seven hours to drive 240 miles, the M25 and the M42 alternating between slow and standstill. Beaconsfield services was jam-packed and people seemed stressed and edgy. We bought a couple of sandwiches from M&S and retreated back into the van. 

It's not as if we haven't managed to get away over recent months - short breaks to Devon, Anglesey, Cornwall and Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The thing is, I don't want a break I need a journey.  Hospital appointments and family commitments are scattered through September and early October. Mindful of those I hit the Brittany Ferries website and changed our pre-booked crossing to Portsmouth - Santander on the 19th October.  That's over two months from now.  

Three days later  - the only thing that has happened to relieve our utter boredom, oh joy! the arrival an email from 'everything genetic' that cost  £120 informing us that our two day tests were negative. the question I am asking myself  is how do I avoid going into a complete slump between now and mid October?

 

Back to the Avenue Verte

Today proved that during a pandemic it is unwise to have expectations, even modest ones. We moved a few kilometres around the estuary to Saint-Valery-sur -Somme. Gill was looking forward to lunch at Sel et Sucres, the only place we know outside of Brittany itself that manages to serve authentic crepes and galletes. As for me, I was looking forward to a bike ride on the cycle trail towards Le Crotoy on the other side of the bay.

We had not reckoned on how busy the Baie de Somme would be, which we should have given it was the middle of August and this weekend coincided with the Feast of the Assumption bank holiday. Though the Saint Valery aire had capacity for a hundred motorhomes we squeezed onto one of the last places. It was about a 15 minute walk from there to the town centre. The creperie was at the far end of the main street giving us plenty of time to realise there was a bit of a scrum to find a lunch spot. The town was heaving, cafes and restaurants had reduced seating inside and out to comply with rules on social distancing. Also, the majority of places were sticking doggedly to the hallowed French convention of lunch service being limited to a two hour slot starting at midday. The result, more people were being turned away than accommodated, and one sensed a burgeoning existential crisis among 'the people' for whom a missed lunch can trigger a sense of impeding societal collapse. Gill too was struck by 'tristesse générale'. She had been avidly anticipating an authentic crêpe for days, when it became clear there was no table available at Sel et Sucres for the rest of the afternoon she became uncharacteristically sad. 

The aire at Saint Valery is some distance from the Baie de Somme cycleway, and given that the town was traffic choked we didn't fancy playing chicken with the cars. Instead we drove a few kilometres around the bay to Le Crotoy in the hope that the aires there which adjoined the track would have spare places. They didn't. It was becoming annoying. Why were we doing this? Even though we had booked our Covid antigen tests locally in a pharmacy in Le Crotoy for next Monday, we decided the area was just too busy, and likely to get impossibly crowded over the weekend, so we headed back down the motorway to Neufchatel-en-Bray and booked into Camping St. Claire for three nights. 

It proved exactly the right thing to do. The site itself is on the edge of town next to the Avenue Verte, about fifteen miles further inland from where we had camped a couple of days previously. We know the area well because the adjacent aire managed by the site is a favourite overnight stop on our longer trips.

The next few days were sunny and warm, picture book France. The site is impeccably kept, hedges neatly trimmed and the flower beds quite spectacular.

The first day we cycled up the Bethune valley towards Forges-les-Eaux, we did not make it the whole way as we had planned to have lunch at the café in the old station at Neufchatel-en-Bray.

 

The place advertised that it specialised in crêpes,  so Gill did get the one she'd promised herself in the end. Though it was a good attempt, not exactly right. Crêpes beyond the Breton border are a bit like pasties outside Cornwall, they never taste the same. The crêpes in  Saint-Valery-sur-Somme are the exception, they are so good because the owner is Breton. 

We decided that difference was not only about knowhow and technique but also using the correct ingredients. Although the cafe in Neufchatel had used the correct buckwheat batter mix the decision to use a Normandy soft cheese rather than the usual harder Emmenthal used in Brittany may have been the reason why the dish, though delicious, did not taste authentic. We have to go back to Brittany we agreed.

We woke the next morning to one of those glorious midsummer days in France with a deep blue, cloudless sky, and a scintillating light that makes the green and yellow patchwork of the fields vibrant, as if the landscape itself is a living thing. 

We were on a mission. The day after we arrived we had cycled southwards from Camping Deux Rivières on the Avenue Verte to the village of Saint-Vaast-d'Équiqueville. Today we aimed to head back there from Neufchatel, so completing the section of the trail between here and the coast. 

Although the temperature had hit the upper twenties by noon, on a bike you don't really feel it, you make quick enough progress to create your own air conditioning. Just how hot it was only struck us when stopped to take photos, which we did quite often, it's a very beautiful small valley, with pretty villages and a Chateau at  Mesnières-en-Bray which would not look out of place by the Loire.

We stopped for lunch at Saint-Vaast-d'Équiqueville. The trail has lots of picnic spots along the way. Every commune seems to take pride in maintaining them, keeping the grass short, the bins empty and placing flower filled planters here and there. 

Then back up the trail, arriving back at the van mid-afternoon. We'd cycled 23 miles, it's been a while since we have managed that sort of distance, admittedly the trail is dead flat and well surfaced and we were riding electric bikes, but still, it must be good for us.

Anyway, all this exertion totally justified doing very little else for the rest of the day. It was a put your feet up sort of afternoon. Almost perfect, but then I don't really believe in perfection so I do feel I have to point out today's minor glitches:

1. A yellow engine warning light has appeared on the dashboard. The handbook says it's a fuel injection malfunction and something to get fixed sometime soon rather than rather than a warning of immediate mechanical failure. I still think the engine might explode every time I turn the ignition key 

2. The hot, dry sunny spell has prompted every arable farmer in the north of France to take to their combine harvesters, they are working in shifts, by day you see them toiling up and down half hidden in a plume of dust, nightfall brings no relief, as we lie in bed we can hear their engines thrumming. The noise is not the problem, it's the dust, the particles must be tiny because you can't see them, but our eyes are streaming, I keep coughing, it's worse than either April blossom or hay fever.

3. The Cadac Safari Chef burner fell to bits this afternoon. They appear to have about a three year life span, this is the second one we've had since we began our wandering life in 2014. At £135 a shot that's not great value for money. Luckily you can buy spare parts, but a new burner costs £50, grumble, grumble...

Ah well, it's much too lovely an evening to bother about such things...time for a glass of wine and an antihistamine.

Testing times

Our return ferry is the day after tomorrow so today's essential task was to turn up at the Pharmacie de Baie de Somme at 2.45 for an antigen test. All went well, we found the store room at the back of the place that they had re-purposed as a testing centre and were seen straightaway. The white coated swab wielding one was efficient and professional but friendly, and the results negative.(Bon!) Shenzhen kun handed us a print-out of our results then our phones went ping. The email gave us a link to the French Ministry of Health site, clicking on it prompted an SMS message with a security code which enabled us to download a document with a QR code. 

This can be zapped at the UK border to prove our Covid free status. All a bit of a faff, but not exactly difficult or onerous, not cheap however at €25.01 each (love the single cent!). Still, considerably less expensive than the 'day two'  tests which we paid for in the UK that cost £60 each, and those were at the cheaper end of what was on offer from Matt Hancock's Del boy mates.

Getting into France a week ago was relatively simple. The French Government 'déclaration sur l'honneur' is easy to complete, an English version is readily available on-line, all you need is a completed paper copy and your NHS vaccination certificate and you are through passport control in a couple of minutes. 

Returning to the UK is a little trickier. Firstly we needed to book a 'day two test' before we left, the UK site listing the private providers is confusing and the pricing all over the place. The provider reviews are almost all negative reporting the non arrival of tests or delays in receiving results. We will see how we fare next Friday. 

Next you need to sort out a test in the country you are visiting  to be taken no more than 48 hours before you arrive back in the UK. It was quite straightforward, but Gill is able to hold a basic conversation in French, how you might manage to book a test in Portugal for example if your grasp of the language was minimal, I am not sure.

Finally the online Passenger Locator Form has to be uploaded to the UK gov website two days before your arrival in the UK. Because the form is designed to cover everyone arriving in the UK from anywhere by any means other than surreptitiously by rubber dinghy, then it's a bit of pain to complete requiring detailed information about who you are, where you have been, and where you are going to stay in the UK. The only section that had me flummoxed was the bit about the post arrival Covid test booking number. Then I vaguely remembered that I had received an email before we left from our test provider with two numbers that I did not understand. I scrolled back through two weeks of unread messages and found them. Ping! Off went the form to Gov.UK, back came a PDF of our details and yet another QR code. These have become the rubber stamps of the digital age, ubiquitous tools of of an omnipresent bureaucracy, overt symbols of covert control.

Will anyone be interested in checking any of this stuff tomorrow when we arrive back in the UK? Maybe simply complying is sufficient, a kind of secular genuflection. That certainly seemed to be the case last October when we filled in reams of paperwork to cross Germany, Switzerland and Italy, none of it was ever checked. When we rolled up to the UK Border Control at the Calais Eurotunnel terminal and offered our carefully completed Passenger Locator Forms the guy in the booth simply waved us through claiming they'd be checked on the other side. Of course with the Tunnel the UK border post is on the French side, when you reach Folkestone you are off the train and straight into the M20. So, we will see if our papers are checked on arrival tomorrow, or if the whole palaver is simply a ploy to discourage foreign travel.

Aside from sorting out our tests we didn't do much at all in Le Crotoy. It's an attractive small port, very popular, lots of seafood restaurants. I suspect most of our fellow travellers in the aire were here for fruits de mer. We are not shellfish enthusiasts. 

We did manage a more mundane gastronomic delight, the baguette Gill bought from Au Bon Pain D'Autrefois was unexpectedly delicious, it is only when you happen upon a place that cares about what a traditional baguette should look and taste like that you realise that most of the time the floppy things you buy from the supermarket is a travesty.

We had planned to cycle around the bay but the weather worsened and a chilly mist blew in from the sea. Instead we took a short walk along the sea wall.  I could put a positive spin on the photos I took and claim they were reminiscent of the pale, pearly light that Seurat captured in the seascapes he painted along this coast in the 1890s.

Alternatively, I could simply accept that it was a dull afternoon and no amount fiddling about with the Google photo settings would improve them.

Next day, after a final Auchun shop we headed west, parking in an aire on the clifftops by the Tréport funiculaire. If anything the weather had worsened, the chilly mist alternating now with drizzle, blown horizontally towards us in a strengthening breeze. 

We made two unsuccessful attempts to take a short walk. The first towards the funiculaire station which was cut short by an outbreak of horizontal drizzle. An hour or so later, now feeling a bit edgy due to the van being buffeted about by the annoying wind, we headed off to find the

mini-market hidden among the nearby social housing blocks. It was one of those boredom fuelled moments where buying  some biscuits to have with a cup of tea became an irresistible imperative. Gill triumphed, foraging some delicious Swiss chocolatey concoctions from a shop largely stocked with cheap knock-off products well past their sell by dates.  I had to absent myself, suddenly I was struck by a violent coughing fit, which is alarming for other people during a global pandemic. I don't think I am succumbing to the virus; despite the windy weather I still think the entire area is full of dust particles from the industrial scale wheat harvesting we have witnessed over the past week.

On the way back we made a detour to have a look at the view from the funiculaire without the horizontal drizzle. The white cliffs above Tréport are magnificent, but the dull weather seems to have affected our spirits. Back to England tomorrow, endishness sets in no matter the length of the trip. All we want now is an uneventful journey home.

A bit of a thing about estuaries, the final countdown and other sundry Euro-bangers

A few posts ago I explained how a recent accidental encounter with the Humber Bridge had revealed a hitherto unrecognised fascination with big bridges. Estuaries are something else I have a bit of a thing about. In this case it's a minor obsession that I have known about for years.

We are quite familiar with St Valery-sur-Somme, a pleasant small town on the western shore of the estuary. In the days when we went camping for six weeks in France with the kids  nearby Camping Drancourt was one of our habitual stopping places en route to Les Landes or Pyrenees. Atlantique. However we have never taken the time to explore the environs of the estuary nor used the bike trail through the salt marshes. Now seemed the right moment to do it, because in future spur of the moment continental jaunts will become a whole lot trickier.

One of the challenges of having to manage future trips within the 90/180 Schengen rules is to do with making short stays in Europe of a week or two. We plan to continue making a trips of 70 days or so during the winter/early spring to Spain and a similar length one to the eastern Mediterranean during the autumn. The only way I can see how to manage a shorter trip to the near continent will be to travel for two or three weeks in late June/early July, but the days spent doing this would end up being subtracted from the autumn trip.

I figure even if we used the Ancona to Igoumetsina ferry both ways we would still need at least 70 days to tour around Thessaly or Crete - both places we have future designs upon. I've given up on the idea of driving through the Balkans to get to Greece. It's more straightforward to make that a separate autumn trip. So that's three autumn trips on the list, shockingly by the time we've done those we will be close to our 70th birthdays. At that point life becomes even trickier, most travel insurance policies limit cover for the over 70s to 35 - 45 days per single trip. Furthermore I might have to downsize the van to a vehicle below 3500kg.

Honestly, I really must stop ruminating over all of this. Back to the here and now! We've found a nice small aire behind the dunes, a couple of kilometres from La Pointe de Hourdel near the mouth of the estuary on the western side. 

Although the place is little more than a patch of rough ground it is owned by  Camping Les Galets De La Molliere across the road who charge €10 and an extra €2 to use the Flotte  Blu service point. However, there was plenty of space whereas in the big free aires dotted around the estuary were 'complet' and resembled living in a crowded car park.

The 'Route Blanche' dedicated to walkers and cyclists runs by the aire, one way to Cayeaux-sur-Mer, the other to Le Hourdel. We took the latter route, through dunes full of wild flowers, then along the shore passed a graffiti daubed WW2 block house. 

The village itself is simply a couple of streets of fisherman's houses, a café or two and a stumpy little lighthouse. However for an estuary enthusiast it ticks all the boxes:

Acres of salt flats under a big sky -

Shingle banks lined with fellow estuary aficionados all staring blankly out to sea -

Weird alien looking shingle plants like you get in Suffolk -

The stumpy little lighthouse enlivened with a giant garish plant pot (a bit of a Gallic thing these giant dayglo plant pots).

After half an hour or so of mooching about we headed back to the van. By the time beer o' clock had been and gone, we'd got out the Cadac, grilled a couple of fairly indigestible Auchun steak hachés, then polished off the nice Savoy white that we'd opened yesterday sunset was in full swing. At first it promised a proper Götterdamerung performance, then it fizzled out behind a cloud bank. I was about to head back inside when the pyrotechnics reignited, the twilight sky became a splurge of purplish pink. 

I would like to claim that it sent me camera in hand scampering up a nearby dune to record the event. I did manage to capture the moment, but my ascent was more of a determined plod than a scamper. It was good that the experience was a solitary one, by the time I reached the top  I suspect my pallor was similar to the afterglow - a garish puce. Hyperventilating and making a peculiar grunting noise like an asthmatic donkey, weakly I raised-up my phone and clicked. 

It was worth the effort for the  sky reflected in the wetlands was truly a  spectacular sight. 

The walk back through the darkening dunes was memorable too, not so much for the soft light but a potpourri of fragrances, some tangy, some herby like thyme, but mostly heady and sweet which emanated from clumps of white flowers. 

They looked a bit like stocks, but these only grow wild  in southern Europe, so I am not sure what they were.

If all of this sounds idyllic, it was almost.  Even Lou Reed acknowledged that a 'perfect day' is an impossible aspiration, the outro of his eponymous song repeats the phrase 'you're going to reap just what you sow', it's a slightly chilling conclusion designed to undermine the rosy 'carpe diem' romanticism of what preceded it. We are survivors of enough French beach holidays in July and August with the kids to be able to predict what was going to happen next. As fully paid up members of the Guardian Travel readers Francophile society we might like to think that after a day of sun and fun on the beach, by the time dusk approaches the natives gather in small, convivial groups beneath the stars, appreciatively sip a distinguished wine and animatedly debate the finer points of de Beauvoir or Derrida. They don't. What they actually crave is 'un spectacle soirée' the cheesier the better.

As we ate our evening meal we heard the tell-tale signs, the campsite across the road's  P. A. system crackled into life, 'un, deux, trois' intoned the wannabe DJ, then there was a short blast of anonymous europop at a Glastonbury pyramid stage volume followed by ominous silence. All was set for whatever divertissement  21 heures had in store.

As I made my way back to the van in the gathering darkness the white-faced dunes shone with an eerie luminescence. 

It should have been a profoundly tranquil moment, however the campsite entertainment  by now was well underway and the  soundtrack to the photo turned to be a particularly inept cover of Bonnie Tyler's 1984 synthpop classic 'Holding out for a Hero'. Belted out in incomprehensible Franglais to a pre-recorded soundtrack reminiscent of some Belgian Eurovision entry from the mid-nineties, it was a mere hors d'ouevre for the delights to come.

We were subjected to three hours of what seemed to be an eighties themed sing-along, co-host by a talentless duo who took turns to murder hits by Blondie, Tina Turner, Bonnie Tyler and a host of other has beens from four decades ago. The result  two grumpy people next morning. Gill's high decibel impossible to shift ear worm - the aforementioned Bonnie Tyler banger; mine, 'The Final Countdown'. Who was responsible for launching this upon an unsuspecting public had escaped me. Some europop outfit from Sweden apparently called unsurprisingly 'Europe'. In the process of tracking down the perpetrators  pleasingly I discovered that a reputable music journal had rated the song as the 27th worst of all time. I hate to think what the other 26 were like.

So here we are, France in August, simultaneously alluring, endearing and abysmal, it was ever thus. Whatever happens though I am really really happy to be this side of the Channel. We love it all, the weird street furniture, extreme traffic calming, disturbing roundabout sculpture, deliberately not quite straight lampposts, the sprawling neon lit retail malls. It's our nearby abroad, our escape from the mundane and familiar, an antidote to insularity.

Avenue Verte

Avenue Verte is a linked series of dedicated cycleways and minor roads that run from the square at the front of Notre Dame to Westminster Bridge. No-one so far as I am aware has yet  opted to use a pedalo on the permanently flooded section from Dieppe to Newhaven, but given how crazy long distance cyclists are it is probably only a matter of time.

We discovered the trail by accident in 2016 as it runs right past the Aire de camping car in Neufchatel-en-Bray which is one of our go to stop-offs in France as we head to or from Spain. 

Small river valleys are one of the the delights of France, the Avenue Vert  runs by the Bethune which wends its languid way through an undulating landscape of small fields and patches of woodland. The fields are full of cows, cheese production is big business locally, Neufchatel-en-Bray itself producing a camembert style product differentiated from its more famous neighbour by it's striking appearance, it is  heart shaped - a rare thing, a cheese for the love-struck.

We decided it would be interesting to explore more of the Avenue Verte. We found a small campsite about five kilometres inland from Dieppe. Camping Des 2 Rivières advertised direct access to the trail, people seemed delighted by the place, the reviews were positively glowing. Experience has taught us that promises on-line don't always materialise in reality. In this case however it did. We wondered if the place had been a former camping municipal, it had the simplicity, conviviality and  rural location found in 'Munis' but upgraded with modern plumbing and a few camping bungalows with a lakeside view.

We were only staying for a couple of nights so we're happy to take the first free pitch we happened upon, it overlooked the river and was convenient for the shower block. After a few minutes it became clear why the pitch was vacant, it was directly opposite the play park. You get lots of reviews from older campers moaning about being next to noisy kids, some places to stay in the UK market themselves as 'adult only'. They are not for us. I would much rather be in a place with a mixture of generations than some moribund plein aire home for the elderly. Anyway the play park was quite entertaining, the under tens playing out some imaginary game or other, bored teens alternating between checking each other out and checking TikTok.

The Avenue Verte itself is the best maintained and appointed cycle track we have ever come across. The London Paris link was first established in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics and on the section in Normandy no expense seems to have been spared in terms of the infrastructure and the conversion of the old stations into trackside cafés. Since we last used it in 2019 the whole stretch has been re-asphalted, smooth as a motorway.

 It does make a difference, we set out for a short trip and ended up covering over 18 miles. It made us realise just how much harder it was to pedal on the usual compacted grit surfaces found on most trails, even when pedelec assisted. 

The plan for the next few days is to head up to the Somme estuary and explore the cycle tracks there. Maybe we'll come back here before we catch the boat back next Wednesday. It's tranquil and unhurried hereabouts, and that's what we need right now.

Dry Run

Two Facebook posts from yesterday explain succinctly why right now we are camped in a field a few kilometres inland from Dieppe feeling smug.

At 8am....

By 4pm....

We decided to chance a Channel crossing on spur of the moment then immediately began to panic slightly. I suppose one of the characteristics of the past eighteen months has been the way  mundane things that we once took for granted suddenly  became problematic or worrisome - what exactly constituted 'local' in the first lockdown, the moment your daughter asked if it was ok to give you a hug, a moment of panic in a bus queue in Cornwall when everyone bunched together. These trigger points are personal, depending upon your pre-pandemic habits and predelictions. So for us booking a ferry to France should be routine, we first crossed the channel together in 1977, since then there has been only one year when we didn't, in most of the others we made multiple journeys.

Continental travel has been complicated by a double whammy, Brexit then the pandemic. When we travelled to Tuscany last October we were still in the Brexit transition phase and largely unaffected by  changes to border and customs arrangements. Since the brief flurry of articles in early February about Dutch customs officials seizing British travellers' Waitrose ham sandwiches, post-Brexit border arrangements have received little attention; unsurprising really, since so few of us were able to travel. 

I re-read the Gov.UK guidelines, they were confusing and contradictory. Basically you cannot take dairy, meat or plant-based products into the EU, but fish is OK. That seems simple enough, but it is unclear if this applies purely to fresh produce or if dried ingredients or processed food is affected too. "How do we stand with this?" Gill enquired, holding up a tub of dried oregano. Just to muddy the waters even more there is a statement in some of the guidelines about items for personal use are allowed up to a 10kg limit. Would this be policed on arrival in France? We would only find out when we arrived, but just to be on the safe side we ditched our dairy, fruit and veg. resigning ourselves to heading straight from Dieppe port to the nearby Auchun.

These restrictions don't seem to apply on the return trip, but stricter duty free rules concerning alcohol and tobacco do. We worked out that between the two of us we could still bring forty eight bottles of wine back, less than before, but hardly Draconian.

The post-Brexit customs arrangements are a tad confusing, however they are perfectly straightforward compared to the miasma of Covid travel rules. Firstly there is the ever changing advice coming from the UK government, then whatever regulations are in force across the channel. 

Grant Chapps finally caved and changed France from  amber plus status to simply amber. Gone was the need to quarantine when we return, all we needed was to pay the extortionate price tag for a 'day two test' (£60 each). Some cowboy operation by the name of 'everything genetic' (note fashionable lower case logo) claim they will have a PCR test whisked to us by courier the day after we get back home and the results returned withinin 48hrs. We shall see, the press is full of stories of outraged travellers whose promised tests failed to materialise.

In comparison getting into France promised to be relatively straightforward. Complete one simple form confirming you are Covid free which is easily available  on the French Government website, print out your NHS App vaccination certificate, present them at passport control and away you go. Would it really be that simple?

We would see, spurred on by a wave of excitement and possibly over confidence I booked a ten day return Newhaven/Dieppe. Moments after the deed was done I  re-read the UK government guidelines, I had missed something, we needed to take a PCR or lateral flow test in France within two days of our return date and present the results on arrival in the UK. Google to the rescue, a simple search for 'covid testing in Seine Maritime and Somme' produced a list of pharmacies and labs in these departments, addresses, phone numbers,  opening times, types of test on offer, all conveniently translated into English. It's not often that you feel grateful for France's love of bureaucracy, but right now it feels preferable to the chaotic Del boy approach to testing in the UK. Will it work as well  when we get there as it promises on paper? We shall see!

The motorways south were slow as sludge, the boredom relieved from time to time by monsoon style downpours.

 It felt the entire country was on the move, little wonder we had been unable to find a campsite with spare pitches in either the Forest of Dean, Lincolnshire or the North Lancs coast. There is no way French sites can be this busy we asserted, they are geared up as a matter of course for a mass coastal migration of their citizenry in August, yet still have the capacity to accommodate the millions of Dutch, Belgian, German and British tourists that head for La Republique every summer. With foreigners in short supply, particularly British ones, we figured we would not struggle to find places to stay.

Our theory was proved correct the moment we arrived at Newhaven docks, the car park was almost empty, one caravanner, and two other motorhomes. 

A few others turned up around 7am and we all duly formed an orderly queue to catch the morning sailing. The boat was not even a quarter full.

Nevertheless it did take longer than usual to board. DFDS required an identical form to the French 'déclaration sur l'honneur' but couched in less legal language.We handed over that, our UK covid pass and our passports, it took a minute or so more than in the past, not an issue in Newhaven with only four sailings a day, but at Dover or the tunnel all those extra minutes would soon add up. Especially if there were a few folk like the young couple in the small hatchback in front of us. Their entire boot was filled with an enormous St Bernard and there seemed to be some problem with Bruno's pet passport. I felt sorry for them when after five minutes of conflab between various officials they were directed to the side. We did not see them on board.

 

Our moment came, up the bumpy ramp onto the vehicle deck, then up five sets of steep stairs (slowly, we are becoming the annoying elderly ones huffing and puffing towards the passenger deck). Soon the white cliffs of Sussex slipped away and five hours of tedium followed. 

Disembarkation definitely took longer than it used to, gone the cursory glance at your passport and a laconic Gallic hand gesture to proceed.  Our NHS Covid pass QR code was duly zapped, 'déclarations sur l'honneur' perused, passports scanned then date stamped. I felt a pang of sadness, finally after six years of argie bargie and prevarication my freedom to wander around Europe as I wished vanished with this simple action. 

Still it was exciting after almost a year to drive out of the port, more exciting in fact than we anticipated as I took the wrong turn and inadvertently drove the van right through the narrow streets of old Dieppe.

Eventually the sat nav sorted us out. Once we were wandering the aisles of Auchun stocking-up on all the things we had been told were no longer allowed to take from the UK to Europe everything seemed quite normal. 

n fact there had been no attempt whatsoever at the French border to check on what was in our fridge, not even posters or leaflets about the changes. Let's hope it stays that way. It's good we made the leap to go abroad, aside from anything else it provides a dry run for for the longer trip planned for ltyer in the autumn. Hopefully by then some of the sillier rules about testing the fully vaccinated will have been abandoned. It feels good to be back; Europe is our second home and always will be.