Three days, four boroughs, one hopeful city

It is difficult to know for certain how many times we've crossed the channel over the past 50 years. We've made at least three trips a year since the 1990s and in the previous decade headed for France at least twice a year. So I guess we must have taken over 120 return cross-channel trips in total, Very few are memorable. The dozens of times we've been stuck in a queue because of cancellations tend to merge together into a foggy irritation. We've miscalculated twice and missed our boat, those I do remember because they proved to be costly mistakes. One crossing that remains etched in my mind is when we chugged up and down the very choppy Dover Straights for two and a half hours because the swell in the harbour was too strong for us to dock safely. Thankfully most crossings have been tediously routine which is exactly what we like.

Given England's famously 'changeable' weather we've arrived in all sorts but dull and drizzly predominates. Occasionally the white cliffs shimmer under a bright blue sky as it did this time. It prompts people to get up and watch - a shared 'sceptred isle' moment. We may debate many things about what Britishness means, but we are undoubtedly an island people; insularity has shaped our outlook for both good and ill.

However, these days for most Brits returning from abroad the first sight of home begins with a patchwork of green fields, converging arterial roads and suburban sprawl interspersed by acres of warehousing as their flight gradually descends towards Heathrow or Manchester or some regional Ryanair hub. Last year we got a great view of the Cheshire plain and the Peak District as we dropped into Manchester on a late afternoon in December, bleary-eyed from an overnight flight from Singapore. 

It was a Blakean 'green and pleasant land' moment rather than a Shakespearean 'sceptred isle' one. Maybe the white cliffs are a national emblem solely for English inhabitants of Great Britain, not so much for the people of Wales and Scotland, I don't know. My father who hailed from Perthshire would exclaim as he drove north across the Scottish border, "What's the best thing ever to come out of England?" To humour him the kids on the back seat would dutifully answer "the road to Scotland!" I can't imagine him ever becoming sentimental about 'the white cliffs of Dover' despite Vera Lynn's best efforts.

No matter how far and how often I travel I am always going to be an Englishman abroad and homecoming does have its charms, like greeting a friend you haven't seen for a while. Our shared history is stitched into the patchwork landscape - distribution centres dwarfing mock Tudor inns recently converted into Balti gastro pubs. 

On the A2  road signs reveal the road's ancient past - Womenswold and Shepherdswell, Bishopsbourne and Snowdown. It's a well trodden path, Julius Caesar, Anglo Saxon raiders and William the Conqueror all came this way. Other invaders would have too, French and German, but for Nelson's victory off the coast of Spain and the efforts of the 'few' over the South Downs in June 1940. Kent has a good claim to be the most historically consequential county in England.

We were heading for Canterbury. It too has a venerable history but that is not why we are regular visitors. Dover Road Park and Ride has one of the few European style motorhome 'sostas' in the UK. This makes it our go-to stop-off whenever we use the Dover/Calais route. In the past we've usually headed straight home from here, but maybe the future will be different.

 It's now over a decade since we took early retirement. It would be wrong to describe the time as uneventful, we've travelled to some amazing places and documented our journeys here in the blog, in Gill's handwritten diaries and in tens of thousands of Google photos. 

However, aside from the months in early 2017 that we spent supporting Gill's father through his final illness, the past decade has not been featured many significant personal or family milestones. In 2025 that changed. Our two elder children became parents - Nico arriving at the end of March, Jesse a few months later on September Ist. Not to be outdone Laura, our youngest, who lives in Tokyo, married her Canadian boyfriend in the summer. Now we are undoubtedly 'the older generation' but I don't think either of us plan to adjust our behaviour accordingly.

We are not heading straight home but have booked into the campsite in Abbey Wood for three nights so we can see how our family's latest arrivals are doing. We arrived at campsite entrance a few minutes after 1pm. the moment the Caravan and Motorhome Club's arcane rulebook allows them to book-in new arrivals. This meant we had time to meet up with Matthew, Kristyna and Jesse in Greenwich for an early evening meal. We opted to eat at a modern Turkish restaurant on the riverbank a couple of hundred metres from their apartment.

When we stopped off in London in September on our way south Jesse was 17 days old. It's amazing the difference six weeks makes. In the restaurant he was definitely more alert, looking around and taking notice.

By the time we left the place a cold drizzle had set in. I took a photo of the towers of Canary Wharf across the water. They shimmered in the veils of rain like a street scene from Blade Runner. After weeks of being parked by the Mediterranean no wonder London looked a tad dystopian.

In reality this is far from the truth. Next day we arranged to meet a Sarah and Nico in Queen Elizabeth Park in Stratford. It's a somewhat convoluted journey involving overground, DLR and underground trains. We needed help from time to time. We didn't have to ask. The sight of two older visitors staring at the network map was enough to prompt staff to offer help. They were chatty too. As were the staff in restaurants and shops. Younger passengers more often than not offered us seats and we ended up having a friendly chat with complete strangers more than we ever do at home.

This is at odds with the prevailing narrative in much of the mainstream media. Trumps irrational ramblings about Sadiq Khan's plan to introduce Sharia law into London has rattled on for years. 

In mid September, the day before we arrived in London on our way south, Tommy Robinson and 150,000 right wing activists look to the streets pushing a similar message. Elon Musk beamed in by video link asserting:

“And what I see happening is a destruction of Britain. Initially a slow erosion, but a rapidly increasing erosion of Britain with massive uncontrolled migration. A failure by the government to protect innocent people, including children who are getting gang raped. It’s unreal. The government has failed in its duty to protect its citizens, which is a fundamental duty of government. This has got to stop.”

The rally purported to be about free speech, actually it was about not liking people with brown faces and paranoia about Islam.  The Guardian reported that Laila Cunningham, Reform UK's London mayoral candidate recently used a central London press conference to paint a picture of the capital as a crime-ridden metropolis, billing herself as “a new sheriff in town” who would, if elected, launch “an all-out war on crime”. It makes great click-bait, the problem is the facts assert the opposite.

After visiting Matthew, Kristyna and Jesse in Greenwich we headed the next day to Stratford to have lunch with Sarah Rob and Nico. They met us in Queen Elizabeth Park and we walked through Hackney Wick, across Victoria Park to a pizza place in Mare street market. 

People were out and about. As we were dog minding while Sarah queued in Victoria Park Village Post Office a local woman stopped to make a fuss of Ralfi. I guess she must have been in her sixties, she looked a tad unkempt but was very chatty, a bit of a local character I suspect. Back home you might spend hours standing outside Buxton Post Office before anyone stopped to chat. Our conclusion - London is a very friendly city.

The pizza place was busy but we managed to squeeze in. Many of our fellow diners were having a solo working lunch, staring at laptops fork in one hand, index finger of the other operating the touch pad. In the twelve years since we retired there has been a revolution in the workplace.

As well as pizza some cake was essential- it's November 4th - Gill's birthday. 

Next day we visited Dulwich with Matthew, Kristyna and Jesse. They are in the process of selling both of their one bedroom flats to buy a two bedroom one jointly. After looking at a few neighbourhoods south of the river they settled upon Dulwich.

 I can see why, it's got a bit of an urban village vibe and plenty of green space. The nurseries and schools are well regarded and it is directly connected to Westminster and Soho where their jobs are based.

It is a little more sedate than East London, it reminded us of Didsbury in Manchester where we lived for a couple years in early the 1980s.

Later, back at the van I pondered over the contradiction between London's media image as a multicultural crime ridden hell-hole and the slightly unkempt but friendly and welcoming place we travelled around over the past few days. So I searched for the statistic using Chatgpt 

Regarding diversity, London and Toronto more less tie for the accolade of being the most multicultural cities on the planet. In percentage terms our capital city has slightly fewer foreign born residents than Toronto, however it's three times bigger. This makes London one of the most diverse cities globally with 37% of residents foreign-born, including people from every country in the world. Over 300 languages are spoken and the city is extremely diverse borough-to-borough- truly a world city. 

Yet the city's schools are amongst the highest performing in the country and it has much better hospitals and NHS services than where we live in Derbyshire. So far as crime is concerned the level of violent crime in London is somewhat lower than many other British cities and similar to other big cities in Western Europe. American cities are much more violent with homicide rates in New York more than twice London's. Some US cities are spectacularly violent, places like St. Louis and Baltimore suffer homicide rates 50 times higher than London. 

Really rather than decrying our capital city we should be celebrating it. That people in one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world can live in peace together and the place ofls friendly and welcoming to visitors is something to be proud of and give us hope in troubled times. There is a deep irony that in an age where we are ever more globally interconnected the greedy algorithms of social media seek to divide us into warring factions in a global culture war.

The notion that travel broadens the mind is undoubtedly a cliché. However actually visiting places does present you with solid facts unlike the world online which is a miasma of dodgy opinion, urban myth and AI generated memes. There is an unsettling resemblance between the growth of right wing popularism and growing authoritarianism in the 2020s and how fascism emerged in the Thiries. In some ways the mere threat of strongman tactics is as toxic as actual tyranny. Bullies sully the social realm and  faced with aggressive behaviour our natural reaction is to hunker down and stick within  familiar places of safety. W. H. Auden captured this beautifully in his short poem 'No Change of Place', written in 1930.

Who will endure

Heat of day and winter danger,

Journey from one place to another,

Nor be content to lie

Till evening upon headland over bay,

Between the land and sea

Or smoking wait till hour of food,

Leaning on chained-up gate

At edge of wood?

Metals run,

Burnished or rusty in the sun,

From town to town,

And signals all along are down;

Yet nothing passes

But envelopes between these places,

Snatched at the gate and panting read indoors,

And first spring flowers arriving smashed,

Disaster stammered over wires,

And pity flashed.

For should professional traveller come,

Asked at the fireside he is dumb,

Declining with a secret smile,

And all the while

Conjectures on our maps grow stranger

And threaten danger.

There is no change of place:

No one will ever know

For what conversion brilliant capital is waiting,

What ugly feast may village band be celebrating;

For no one goes

Further than railhead or the ends of piers,

Will neither go nor send his son

Further through foothills than the rotting stack

Where gaitered gamekeeper with dog and gun

Will shout ‘Turn back’.

Moral of the poem - be the traveller not the hearth dweller, distrust gate-keepers.

 

 

 

How many hops? How many days?

According to Google maps it's 1400kms from Bologna to Calais, so a little over 800 miles. It will take us a lot longer than it used to do. When the kids were young, in the 1990s, we spent most Easters somewhere south of the Alps, in the Cote d'Azure, Tuscany or the Costa Brava. It sounds quite 'bougie'; less so when you factor-in that we used Haven's ten day early season deal where you could get a ferry crossing and stay in one of their basic mobile homes for little more than £100. Not swanky, but fun - it's been our travel mantra ever since.

Somehow we managed the journey of over 1000 miles with only three overnight stops. It takes us much longer now. Ideally I don't like to drive more than two days in a row, but if you are heading home from south of the Alps at moho speed then 200 miles per day feels doable, any further than that a bit of a stretch. This means you have to be willing to drive for a few days on the trot to make decent progress. Ten years ago we just took our time, but the Schengen visa rules seriously messed things up. Schengen requires us to be in the UK for at least 90 days before 7th February next year - the day our ferry to Spain will dock in Santander. We can't dawdle, we have to be home in early November. In the end we made five overnight stops on the way back to the UK and it took us eight days. Sedate progress, but I still felt exhausted afterwards, I guess it's an age thing.

Bologna to Fontanellato

It's hard to let go of Italy. In the end Bologna to Switzerland, even Ticino, the Italian speaking canton, felt like a step too far. So we decided to revisit Fontanellato, the little town near Parma where our Italian journey began a little over a month ago.

We arrived in the early afternoon and walked into the centre from the sosta. There was a small craft market in the square by the castle, I guess it's a regular Sunday event. It wasn't particularly busy, but not deserted either, a few people out and about. 

Even though it was sunny and the temperature hovering on the high teens, people were wrapped up in 'puffer jackets' and big scarves. It will stay that way until some point next May, when simultaneously from Alte Adige to southern shores of Sicily hats jackets and scarves disappear from the daily passigiatta. How this happens I have no idea, something genetic like the way swifts or storks migrate, a moment defined by ecclesiastical authorities announced from the pulpit?

Anyway we were the most underdressed customers sitting outside the café, then risked hyperthermia when we visited the gelateria a few doors down. Our last Italian gelato until next autumn.

Fontanellato to Monteceneri

Our plan was to head home retracing the way we came. Gill doesn't buy into this idea and feels that even if you return exactly the way you came it is in fact an entirely different journey since you experience it from a different point of view. She's the qualified geographer, so I guess she must be right, at least up to a point.

However, in the case of the tangenziale around Milan, deosil or widdershins the road is equally alarming. Less so than when we first drove around it in the mid 1990s. Back then, whether behind the wheel of a juggernaut, sporty Alfa Romeo or rusting Fiat Panda, everyone drove an imaginary Ferrari. Nobody adhered to the speed limit, vehicles jostled for position inches apart and when the three lane motorway filled to the point of becoming log-jammed, instead of slowing down, drivers formed an informal fourth lane to maintain the Whacky Races vibe. Halfway through my first encounter with this madness I had to pull off into a service area for half an hour to calm my shattered nerves.

Things are better these days, it's hardly sedate, but it doesn't feel life threatening. Still it takes care and concentration to navigate the many interchanges. At times trucks outnumber cars, Milan sits astride the route that connects France and Iberia to the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as being a hub on the route north for every tin of tomatoes and Italian pasta shape gracing supermarket shelves on the other side of the Alps.

From the Milan tangentale to Area Sosta Tamaro near Monteceneri is less than than an hour's drive north. It's a convenient stopping place, a halfway house between south and north, Italian speaking but in Switzerland. We discovered that the petrol station next to it had an LPG pump. We managed to refill our gas tanks but not without assistance from a helpful employee. We carry four brass adapters which in theory allows us to refill anywhere in Europe. We had checked on-line that for Swiss pumps you need the 'cup shaped' fitting - like in France. Faced with this particular Swiss 'pistolet' there was no way this would work. The garage guy explained that in Ticino they use the same adapter as in Italy.

Area Sosta Tamaro is convenient, but not cheap. You pay by the hour and the tariff is difficult to get your head around, we arrived mid-afternoon and left about 11am. the following day. It cost about £31, which is considerably more than the going rate elsewhere. Most people using the place were German. They tended to arrive late and leave early. We're British, and culturally conditioned to be congenitally less organised; so we grumble a bit then pay the price.

Monteceneri to Fessenheim

Today's journey proved the veracity of Gill's theory that the journey from B to A is fundamentally different to the one from A to B, in other words the notion that it is possible to 'retrace your steps' is mythical. It felt longer than a little over a month ago since we headed south on the A2, now homeward bound using the same route. We are retracing our steps. 

However the experience was very different. Heading south we drove through torrential rain and were mildly traumatised by the heavy traffic powering through the badly designed contraflows around Como. Heading north five weeks later proved Gill's theory, the same road driven in the opposite direction was a complete different experience. Under a bright blue sky Switzerland conformed to it's chocolate box image. 

What was even more unusual was the lack of traffic. The A2 through the San Gottardo is a major north/south route. There are always long queues at the tunnel, particularly on the southern side because the three lane motorway narrows to a two way road as it burrows for 17kms. through the mountains. For some reason the road was peculiarly empty. 

It made for a relaxing drive, though driving through the tunnel with hardly another vehicle in sight felt slightly spooky.

We made two small deviations from our route southwards, opting to skirt Basel taking the motorway to the east of the city, then cutting across into Alsace to stay overnight in the Camping Car Park at Fessenheim. There's a clutch of Camping Car Parks around Mulhouse and Colmar all handy of you are heading to or from Italy.

The place looked to have been established recently. As well as motorhome parking the area had fitness equipment, skateboard park and padel and baseball courts. The area was landscaped in a contemporary 're-wilded' style, with lots of seats dotted about. It exuded a uniquely French municipal ambience combining bland utilitarianism with occasional outbursts of quirky over-design. After a while we began to feel as if we were trapped in an early noughties Sims Gallic extension pack.

Still the place was just what we needed, a quiet night after a long drive. Even better, the aire was a five minute walk from a Super U hypermarket. We don't guzzle as much wine and beer as we used to, so maxing out the duty free allowance is less of a priority. However, Illy Rosso, our go-to Italian coffee brand, is 30% cheaper in France than in the UK. Oddly it's more expensive in Italy than in France - the duty must be less in France I guess. Annoyingly, a month ago when we travelled south there seemed to be a national Illy shortage, it's still hard to come by, but we found a few four-packs on the shelves on the Super-U, enough for us to regard our stop-off in Fessenheim as a success.

Fessenheim to Metz

Next day, the same thing, retracing our steps - through the Vosges north of Selesat using the disquietingly narrow Tunnel Maurice Lemaire. We used to go over the Vosges via the Col de Bonhomie, it's more scenic but considerably slower, also technically illegal for us as vehicles over 3500kg are prohibited; nobody seems to care, in the past we've crawled over the pass following coaches and artics.

Beyond the Vosges you leave the valley of the Rhine and follow the upper valley of the Meuthe. Each time you cross the river it widens, not much more than a stream north of St Die but fully navigable by the time you reach the outskirts of Nancy. We were heading for the Camping Municipal in Metz. The city is somewhere we've whizzed past frequently on the A31, speeding past Ikea, then a sprawl of retail parks and distribution centres, the only thing of of note - FC Metz' impressive modern stadium.

However the bland outskirts mask a city with a venerable past. Metz was an important independent archbishopric within the Holy Roman Empire in the late Medieval period. Then along with the rest of the Duchy of Lorraine the city switched between French and Imperial control for much of the early modern era before being absorbed by France in 1766. Between 1870 and 1918 it was ceded to Germany before returning to French control at the end of WW1. In truth it was not the place's illustrious history which led us to stay for two days, the camping municipal had a washing machine and we needed clean underwear. Practicality rather than culture shapes our travels!

Metz, then Ciry Salogne to Calais

As a rule I avoid driving the moho in urban areas and whenever circumstances force me to do it I am reminded why I vowed 'never again' previously. Like many built-up areas in France Metz has invested heavily in traffic calming. Often this involves widening pavements, building bike lanes and establishing lots of 30kph sections protected by speed bumps. All laudable on paper, but once you factor in the French propensity to ignore parking restrictions then threading the van through the narrow streets, carefully avoiding both badly parked cars and randomly placed bollards proved very stressful.

I was pleased to arrive at the gates of the municipal campsite unscathed, especially as the final kilometre or so involved crossing a single carriageway bridge then snaking through more badly parked cars that lined the tree lined track to the site. Gill hopped out to book us in, I waited patiently at the other side of the barrier. A small truck pulled up on the other side of the gate which raised automatically allowing the delivery driver to pull up immediately in front of me. Clearly he was on a tight schedule and needed me to reverse. Thankfully nobody had drawn up behind, so I edged backwards, squeezing past the vehicles parked between the trees. After about 200m I found an empty space, but it was not much more than the length of the van. I don't really do reverse parking in the moho, especially single handed without Gill at the rear waving her arms about. Needs must however, and by sheer luck I managed to tuck the moho between the two trees at the first attempt. The delivery truck squeezed past. The barrier raised as I approached it, Gill was waiting just beyond it having completed the lengthy admin involved in booking into any site run by the local Marie. 'That looked a bit tricky,' she observed as she clambered into the cab.

Metz Camping Municipal is attractively situated next to one of the branches of the Meuse which divide the centre of the city into three islands. Judging by the number of evacuation notices dotted about the site the waterside ambiance comes with a downside - so much so that the pitches by the river bank are closed most of the time.

The historic centre is about a ten minutes walk. We liked the way the ancient centre is interconnected by flower decked bridges. 

Metz has some impressive monuments - the Gothic Cathedral is enormous, overwhelming almost, and in terms of metres squared boasts the most extensive display of medieval stained glass in the world. 

We decided to admire the building from the outside rather than pay €15 each to look inside. A tad philistine perhaps, but I'm done with big churches. Camus says it better than I ever could - "It's a strange and insufferable uncertainty to know that monumental beauty always supposes servitude."

As for the city itself, maybe the fluvial setting is more memorable than the place's architecture. There are some memorable buildings, like the Eighteenth century market hall and the Art Noveau houses on some of the squares. 

Overall though, most streets are quite bland, pallid faced examples of the monotonous neo-classical style you find in so many of France's provincial cities - Bordeaux, Montpellier, Reims - one boulevard much the same as another.

We may decry the monotonous sprawl of this century's 'Centres Commercial', but France's propensity for homogeneity has a much deeper history. In 2023 there were 34,965 communes in France each with a local council and elected mayor. They were established in the late Eighteenth Century during the French Revolution replacing the traditional 'pariosse' as the smallest administrative body. More than two centuries later over 90% of them have the exact same boundaries. Now as then they ensure policies emanating from Paris are implemented consistently across La Republique.

So when busy motorways suddenly empty at 11.50am on the dot, or you discover while driving through a French town at noon that there are traffic snarl-ups outside every single boulangerie, to an Anglo Saxon it all seems very peculiar, but for locals 'c'est normale'. OK, Liberté is chiselled into the French psyche, but to us it presents itself as peculiarly regulated; a deeply conventional kind of freedom.

This is not the first time our blog has touched upon t becoming 'Frenched out', in fact I wrote a rambling post about it last year. It's sad but true that alongside La Repubique's many delights France is not the most welcoming of places. This may be due as much to manners and social mores as anything else.

According to the latest "World Happiness Report' France (33rd) is ranked above Italy (40th), Spain (38th), and Japan (55th). However, the latter three countries all feel much more welcoming and positive than France from a visitor's perspective. Maybe it's simply the case that French people are less inclined to 'put on brave face' out of politeness. If your well intentioned terrible French annoys them they get grumpy and feel under no compunction to hide the fact.

The chef-owner of the creperie where we had lunch was very offhand, the crepes were mediocre too.

In the market the stall-holder was merely brusque rather than dismissive.

However neither could compete with the girl in the café who delivered our 'deux noisettes'. She exuded a demeanor that was baleful and despondent simultaneously - which is a neat trick if you can pull it off. The British travel writer Tim Moore described a similar encounter in France as 'like meeting Eyeore with cancer' which sounds a tad hyperbolic until it happens to you.

We had to vacate our pitch by 11am. as the campsite was closing for the winter at noon. Just to remind us someone from the office knocked on our door around tennish. Getting off the site was much easier than when we arrived, the one way system around Metz worked in our favour and it was straightforward to get back on the autoroute. If you have reached the Frenched-out stage then the Camping-car Park app is a blessing. You can pre-book your space, the entry barrier uses number plate recognition and payment is contactless. It minimises human interaction which for the introverts of the world is fine and dandy. 

In the event there were only a couple of other vans parked up in the aire at Ciry Salogne. It was Halloween, by chance it coincided with a harvest full moon. 

The small lake by the aire looked very beautiful in the golden twilight. The clocks changed a couple of days ago and will do so again when we arrive back in the UK the day after tomorrow. 

A week ago in Italy it was still light at 6.45pm, next week it will be twilight by fiveish, another year slowly slips away.

There comes a point as a journey's end nears when you just want to get home. Before our crossing we stayed at Sangatte, the aire nearest to Calais, it too has joined the Campingcar Park group. It's the only one that is patrolled by security guards, an attempt I suppose to discourage migrants from targeting motorhomes as a way of hitching a ride across the channel. After our experience last year I checked beneath the bike rack cover for unexpected guests. This time we had no surprise guests.

The route from the aire to the ferry terminal skirts the edge of the port. The perimeter is protected by two 6m high wire security fences, covered by floodlights and CCTV. The port area itself has been redesigned with large holding areas to accommodate the queues which will result from the introduction of ETIAS in the coming months. The effect is somewhat chilling. We prefer the Newhaven/ Dieppe route because it feels smaller scale and less dehumanising. However, because our arrival in the UK coincides with the end of October half-term the Dieppe crossing was fully booked. Also, since we were heading back to London to see how Nico and Jesse were doing the Calais crossing makes more sense.