Monday: Italy - across the plains
No matter how many times you visit Italy the place never loses its capacity to spring a surprise. As ever it was late morning before we managed to pack up. Traffic was light on the wide avenues between the campsite and the motorway. Three or four motorhomes were parked on a quiet side street. An exposed place to over-night, I thought myself, as we drove past. It took me a couple of minutes to connect parked vans with the women standing on roadside nearby. Then it dawned on me, in the past Italian roadside prostitutes' essential equipment consisted of little more than a folding picnic chair and a chunky bonkbuster; clearly they've gone upmarket. When you think about it, a motorhome is uniquely suited to the requirements of their particular trade.
A long autopista day beckoned, Bologna to the Tamara motorhome parking area in Switzerland, four hours of tedium interspersed with twenty minutes of terror as we rounded the Milan tangentiale.
Our only task today was to address yesterday's oversight, which in itself involved rectifying a slip-up from the day before. Really buying a slab of parmesan while visiting Bologna should not present a challenge. Finding vintage 30 month old DOC parmesan in a supermarket in the UK might be problematic, but in Emilia Romagna it should have been as easy as buying a Gregg's sausage roll in Gateshead.
On Saturday Bologna's market area was like a scrum, with queues in all the specialist food shops. We decided to postpone the parmesan purchase until the next day, then we were in such a rush on Sunday we forgot. Still, today's journey took us past some of the Po valley's gastronomical hot-spots - Modena, Reggio, Parma - there had to be somewhere that could sell us glorious cheese!
In fact there were scores of outlets when we searched on Google maps, but we had an additional need, the place had to be easily accessible in a motorhome. We settled on a supermarket on the outskirts of Parma. Paladin Otello is a small chain that specialises in northern Italian gastronomy, a supermarket sized delicatessen really. We bought the requisite vintage parmesan and lots of other goodies besides.
Onwards, the Milan tangentiale proved relatively benign. Less than an hour later we were parked in Area Camper Tamara arrivaderci Italia, buongiorno Ticino, really Switzerland's Italian speaking Canton does not feel entirely Swiss, more a limnal region with a north/south identity crisis. We decided to delay the onset of 'endishness' until tomorrow, a full blown slump postponed until the moment we exited the northern end of the San Gothardo tunnel.
Tuesday: Switzerland - over the Alps
We entertained ourselves yesterday evening with a long, rambling conversation about how many times we had driven through the Alps over the years. About two dozen times we decided. It should have made us very familiar with glorious Alpine landscapes, but this is not the case. We have had a few moments resembling the opening credits of the Sound of Music but most journeys have been accompanied by low cloud, drizzle, downpours and sleet. This shouldn't surprise us, at home we have far more gloomy days than bright ones, though the hills around us are only a little over 300m. The mountains that tower over the San Gothardo are are ten times higher, magnets for cloud, no wonder we recall Switzerland somewhat gloomily.
However, today was the exception joining the handful of moments over past three decades when Switzerland assumed the look of a TUI Lakes and Mountains brochure cover rather than the trailer for Happy Valley season three. Gill took lots of photos as we sped through Switzerland. In Ticino...
Approaching the San Gothardo...
North of the tunnel heading for Lucerne...
How many times have we seen it this cloudless? Never, and maybe only on three or four occasions over the past thirty years have we seen the Alps in such glorious sunshine, though we have crossed them dozens of times. Without getting too morbid about it, the laws of probability make it unlikely we will ever experience them like this again. A unique experience like a total eclipse, but less predictable. In such circumstances should we feel downcast or blessed? A glass half empty/full question, I suppose.
Wednesday/Thursday - fluvial France
One of the glories of the French countryside is its beautiful rivers. When in the early 1790s the French Revolutionary government decided to break with tradition and distance itself from the country's monarchist past it re-organised internal boundaries and gave the new 'departments' names based on geographical features rather than historic allegiances. So it is no accident that even today 70% of France's departments are named after rivers. Most of the big rivers have been improved or canalised to make them navigable, which for is a blessing for motorhomers because many of the facilities developed for boat owners also offer an overnight place for vans too.
A couple of nights ago we stayed overnight on the Ill de Rhin, as the name suggests it's an island in the Rhine, or more accurately, an artificial one created by the river to the east and the Grande Canal d' Alsace to the west. The canal is well named, an expansive stretch of water with giant locks able to accommodate enormous barges stacked with containers or piled high with gravel.
Unlike many canal-side stop-overs, the aire is not based at a 'capitanerie' but run by the Camping-car park chain. We are fans of this French company whose app based system has developed a network of 300 stopping places for motorhomes, redesigned for the digital age. It costs about €5 euros to buy one of their smart-cards from the machine at the gate. You then top it up and can use it to pay at any of the sites, they are inexpensive, typically about €12 - 15 per night. Because you can book on-line it takes the uncertainty out of turning up on spec as the app details how many places are available. Also they are well maintained, so you can be sure even in winter the water tap will be turned on, which is not always the case with municipal Aires de Camping Car.
The northern tip of Ille de Rhin is an interesting spot. It is next to the French town of Vogelgrun. As the name suggests Germany is only a few hundred metres away on the opposite side of the river. The Romanesque towers of Breisach cathedral are clearly visible across the water, their silhouette unmistakably Teutonic.
At first glance the area looks unremarkable, but actually there's enough here to keep you occupied for a couple of days. Breisach itself looks interesting, the big locks and hydro-electric plant next to the parking area is impressive and cycle paths lead off north and south on the eastern bank of the river.
Ille de Rhin is intriguing. About half a kilometre across but nearly 50kms long the island is an odd geographical anomaly created by the way canal shadows the meandering river. There are few bridges, so it is one one those tracts of wilderness you happen upon within the humanised landscape, like empty scrubland on the edge of a retail park, or the bunny heaven you glimpse in between slip-roads and flyovers where two motorways merge. Only in this case the accidental wilderness is so big it has been designated as a nature reserve. The serpentine island is wooded in the main, largely uninhabited but not abandoned. There is a golf course and the larger hydro-electric plants are connected by service roads. The whole thing appeals to my inner psychogeographer. We will return someday and explore the place on bikes. Not this time though, with a ferry to catch northwards through Alsace and Lorraine we must go.
In fact back to Pont-a-Musson, another riverside stop, this time by the Meuse, run by the Capitanerie and within walking distance of the town. This was the fourth time we had stopped here but for some reason we had never made it into the town centre. We use the place as an overnight stop, a few kms. north of Nancy it's well placed for a dash across France when heading to or from Italy. We decided to stay for two nights and take a look at the town.
The place is unexceptional but attractive, a typical medium sized French country town, an agricultural hub with a now defunct foundry. The place's name appears everywhere in the north of France, but unlike 'Place General de Gaulle' or 'Rue Victor Hugo', the chances are you won't have noticed, unless you have an esoteric interest in drain covers, because that's what the old foundry specialised in.
I had plenty of time to appreciate Pont-a-Musson's delightful central square. Gill needed to replenish her supply of anti-histamines so required a visit to 'la pharmacie'. In France going to the chemist is not like popping into Boots. Whereas the British tend to have a 'Keep Calm and Carry On' attitude to being a little unwell, French people take health matters more seriously, and along with gastronomy, coiffure, boules and bad driving, hypochondria is a popular pastime. So even though there were only three people in front of Gill in the queue it took 15 minutes for her to get served. Each customer seemed to require an in-depth discussion of their physical and mental well-being before buying some miracle cure for flatulence or a packet of corn plasters, and every product required a bar code to be zapped at least three times, and the customers health insurance documents carefully scrutinized.
I mooched about outside people watching, which is always entertaining in France as people assume a distinctly performative approach to occupying public spaces, being seen to be seen is 'de riguer'. It means things happen differently here, there is no such thing as 'simple appearances' everything ends up some sort of impromptu performance
It had been a short drive from the stop by the Rhine to Pont-a-Musson so we ended up visiting the town on the afternoon of the day we arrived. This left us with little to do the following day. Port-a-Musson's star attraction is a museum of paper-maché art, this felt like a spectacularly uninspiring proposition. Instead we headed for the central food market to find some delicious local ingredients, planning a leisurely lunch to celebrate our final day in France.
The market hall was closed, only operating on Saturday and Sunday mornings. In truth weekly markets are the norm in France, the months we have spent in Italy and Spain have left us with the sense to that southern Europe has a produce orientated food culture. South of the Alps that may be the case, but France's food culture is more like the rest of Western Europe's, dominated by hypermarkets selling convenience foods on an industrial scale situated in out-of-town 'centre commercials' ringed by fast food joints. The idea that the country has a world class gastronomical culture may have been true half a century ago, these days the only people who believe that are the French themselves.
So we were at a loose end. The Capitanerie was on the opposite side of the river to the town centre, and now we were in town it seemed simply a waste of the day to head straight back to the van.
So we took a stroll along the river for a few kilometres. It was one of those crystal clear autumn afternoons, across the water the two towers of the Abbeye Des Prémontrés reflected perfectly in the mirror-like Moselle.
Russet trees, brittle teasels in the foreground - as I composed the photo I had a distinct sense of the year slipping away, our journey too as some kind of arc descending. Tomorrow, Belgium, not quite the same as thinking tomorrow Italy.
Friday - towards a Belgian cliffhanger
We decided to head north through Belgium and Luxembourg. Why? The most direct route from Lorraine to Calais heads northeast towards Reims, but it's toll motorway most of the way. On our trip to Angers last July we notched up €120 euros in toll charges. The motorways up the east side of France, through Luxembourg and Belgium are toll-free. It's a longer journey but I figured we saved more on tolls than the cost of the additional fuel. Not by much, once you factored in the campsite fees in Belgium compared to a free aire in France, maybe we were quids-in by €30, if that's not a contradiction in terms. This raises the question, is €30 a price worth paying to avoid Belgium?
Not that Belgium is a terrible place, it's just very quirky in a way that's ok when you are heading out, but feels tiresome on the heading homewards leg as you reach the stage when just need to stop.
There must be a campsite somewhere in Belgium that is run by normal people, is well designed, has comfortable showers and bland decor and signage. It's just we have never discovered it. Every place we have stayed has had some peculiarity, some idiosyncratic quality worthy of analysis by Jonathan Meade.
We broke our journey at Camping le Pommier Rustique, just off the autoroute a few kilometres south of Namur. The place's Belgiumness centred on the pitches and sanitary arrangements. It's the only site we've ever stayed on which designates different pitches for caravans, motorhomes and campervans, the latter two with providing concrete strips for the wheels.
All of them were small and awkward to reverse into. The one we ended up on had an alarming embankment at the rear overlooking a road. The van's rear overhang overhung a steep slope It felt odd.
The place's the ramshackle facilities are housed in metal huts. This is to be expected, 'glamping in Belgium' is not a tweet you are ever going to see. However, the owners of le Pommier Rustique have taken a punt at elevating the place by installing a hot tub and sauna.
The hot tub is housed in a plastic hut resembling a kids playhouse.
The sauna is in a garden shed... You see, Belgium, idiosyncratic, eccentric, but like the entry for Earth in the Encyclopedia Galactica - 'mainly harmless'.
Saturday - L' Aa
It's 300kms from the Ardennes to Calais, so a whole day's drive mostly through Wallonie's post industrial sprawl, past Charleroi, Mons, Roubaix, their outskirts all equally unlovely. Our ferry from Calais is first thing tomorrow, we needed to find somewhere to stay tonight a few kilometres to the north. The free aire at Bergues seemed like an obvious choice, then Gill came across another free place closer to the motorway - Aire de Camping-Cars du Parc du Rives de l'Aa. The river l'Aa forms the border between Nord and Pas de Calais departments. It has to be the most ridiculously named river in France, so in my book a must see destination.
The aire is in the corner of of a public car park in a country park next to a big water sports complex. We're slightly nervous about sleeping in open spaces, but the place was a bit off the beaten track and there were a couple of other van's drawn up, so we decided to stay.
Maybe we might use it again, there are walks and cycle ways nearby and Gravelines is only a couple of kilometres distant. We keep promising ourselves a visit to its famous Vauban ramparts, next time maybe A Belgian campervan drew up and parked opposite us. The couple were friendly and one of the few people we have met on our travels that had heard of the Peak District. Their daughter's new partner came from Derbyshire. They recounted how he was stuck in Antwerp unable to work waiting for his 'co-habitation' papers to be approved, enabling him to stay in the EU indefinitely as the partner of one of its citizens. "He is a refugee at the moment," the man commented. Given the recent history hereabouts as a magnet for migrants, there seemed to be a cruel irony in the young British man's situation. It never struck the people who voted 'Leave' that taking control of our borders would work both ways.
Sunday - Goodbye summer time
In truth crossing the Dover Straights has never been a fun experience. All the post-Brexit faffing about has made it even more tiresome, four separate checks, French immigration and douanes, then the police checking for migrants, the same thing again, but this time the British side's turn. As we queued waiting to board the drizzle became a steady downpour.
We have crossed many borders, none quite match Dover's enthusiasm for security paraphernalia or feel as overtly unwelcoming. We have definitely taken control, but without extending our iron curtain across the entire Kent coast desperate people will simply keep landing uninvited in droves on some remote beach along the coast; over 30,000 have so far this year. Nobody wins here apart from tabloid headline writers. Does anyone arrive in Dover gladly aside from the asylum seekers themselves?
It was two-ish by the time we were heading up the A2. Too late to drive back to Buxton, especially as the clocks changed yesterday. Back to New Dover Road, these days whenever we use a short channel crossing Canterbury seems to have become our first and last port of call.
Monday - Five o'clock shadows
It's very rare to drive any distance in England without some hold-up or other. Today was no exception, a three car shunt on the M25 brought us to a standstill for half an hour so.
Then a 40mph speed limit for miles for no apparent reason.
It was mid-afternoon when we pulled onto the pavement outside of our house. I snapped the dashboard - 4009 miles on the trip counter, maybe our longest journey without a break.
As ever it's had its moments good and bad. Shame about the damage to the van, and the heatwave back in August was challenging. Good though to revisit Greece even if we failed to get to Delphi as I had planned. The glories of Salento were probably the discovery of the trip, though returning to Paestum was equally memorable. Dusk by 5pm. I dread the dark days of winter
Time to light the fire pit and celebrate homecoming with a BBQ on the deck. Really Brittany Ferries lifting £1009 from our bank account should not provoke a moment of jubilation. However, it signifies that in 88 days time we will be sailing down the Solent heading for Santander. Is the best trip always the one you are anticipating?