Simmer gently, then bring to the boil.

There is a simple reason why we haven't taken to the by-roads of bonny Scotland or driven to see the midnight sun at Nordcapp. One of the delights of motorhoming for months on end is being able to live outside. It only takes three rainy days in a row and cabin fever sets in, and our 7 x 2.3 metre metal box becomes more like a big hutch than a small house. Consequently our travels over the past dozen or so years mainly have been through Europe's sunnier climes, apart from a springtime trip to Scandinavia in 2019, and a moment of weakness a couple of years later when erroneously we decided that Ireland might be an interesting place to visit. 

The challenges this year have been significantly different. Earlier in the year our habitual late winter trip to Iberia was not unusual, zigzagging our way around the peninsula trying to find the sunniest spots, keeping a 'weather eye' on Met Eireann's Atlantic pressure charts, which are the best weather graphics we have found; they provide an animated summary of the meteorological big picture for Europe's western seaboard from Tromso to Gibraltar.

Since then we have had a different challenge weatherwise. Weeks of wall to wall blue would be ideal great had the endless sunny days not been accompanied by daytime temperatures well into the thirties followed by tropical nights. Even with all the windows and skylights fully open, the van doesn't cool down, we spend hours squirreled under the awning rather than getting out and about.

In May we went long haul simmering in the humidity of Hong Kong and Tokyo; in late June and early July we boiled in the Czech Republic, then arrived home to an unprecedented heatwave. September and October are usually a pleasant time to travel in southern Europe, daytime temperatures in the high twenties are not uncommon, but nights dip down into the mid-teens, so you get comfortable sleep. 

Not so this year, the whole time we were in the camping municipal at Loupian by the Etang Thau daytime temperatures were well into the thirties by late morning and struggled to drop into the teens overnight.

It's a lovely corner of France and under blue skies it looks captivating. However simply mooching about wasn't an option, in extreme heat the minutiae of everyday existence needs to be carefully pre-planned. 

The nearby town of Meze has a traditional market twice a week on Thursdays and Sundays. It's a popular thIng for locals and tourists alike, and because it closes on the dot at noon we managed a visit on both days before the heat became unbearable.

A cycleway connects Meze to the villages to by the Etang to the east. Formerly it was a narrow gauge railway built to take the Etang de Thau's famous oysters to market. 

The railway is long gone but the oyster trade is flourishing. We cycled to nearby Bouzigues. The village is a major producer of oysters and mussels. It looked to us that the beds had grown significantly since we were last here two years ago. 

The place itself is a classic southern French village with a tangle of narrow streets leading up from the waterfront to the church and small square at its centre. It's a place with a singular mission- oysters! This gives it a purposeful atmosphere, it's not simply a tourist trap like so many places on France's Mediterranean littoral. 

The boulangerie in the centre of the village is an excellent example of a local family run business that produces traditional bread, croissants and cakes. These used to be ubiquitous, but less so these days, so it's always a moment to savour when serendipitously you happen upon one.

The heat mades it more comfortable to cycle than to walk. Getting to and from Bouzigues along the cycle track was almost pleasant. The narrow streets on the village had plenty of shade too, but the heat was brutal.

As soon as we sat down on a seat with a view of the Etang de Thau to consume the pain chocolats we had just bought we began to bake. We scooted back to the campsite to finish our lunch beneath the awning.

A waterbus runs across the Etang from Meze to Sete, operating from mid-May to mid-September. We've used it before and enjoyed stopping for lunch in a small café near Sete market. The place specialises in different types of coffee and makes a bit of a thing about reinventing the humble 'croque'. For some reason the place opted to name their elevated toasties after sex bombs of Hollywood's golden age. Previously I'd gone for the 'Rita Haywood', and being a creature of habit probably would do so again.

We figured that the 20 minute boat trip across the Etang would be cooling on a hot day. Sadly we forgot the waterbus had a glass roof. The temperature, tropical at the outset, became equatorial before were were halfway across.

 It's about a twenty minute walk from the pier where the waterbus docks to our lunch spot in Rue Alsace Lorraine, a small street near Les Halles de Sete. We stuck to the shady side of the streets, the shadows were jagged edged and the temperature intolerable in the sun. 

Sete is unexpectedly grand for a medium sized port, with tree-lined boulevards of elegant Art Nouveau buildings which wouldn't look out of place in Paris's 16th Arrondissement. 

The area we headed for was not so grand, but attractive nonetheless, a grid of more modest streets below the woods of Mont Sant-Claire, the cone shaped hill in the centre of Sete - one of a series of ancient volcanic outcrops which punctuate the expansive salt flats that stretch the length of Languedoc's coastline.

We arrived in the right area but couldn't find the exact spot. It took us a while to work out that the name of the café was different on Google maps to the sign over the door - anyone looking for the place listed on Google as 'Tatie Cherry' will struggle, the sign above the door remains the same as the previous two times we have been here - Torrefaction Noailles

By now it was a little after 1.30pm, the tables outside were all taken, but one place was available inside. By the time our food arrived the place was more or less empty. The idea of eating lunch at 1.45pm would seem very weird to a French person, but we're not French so we don't care.

I do love this informal little cafe, it feels a bit 'rive gauche' and bohemian, a bit chaotic, but the food is exceptional for such a workaday place.

,

 As predicted I found myself slowly devouring Rita Hayworth who turned out to be just as delicious as my previous attempt. 

You have a choice of legendary Hollywood vamps on a plate, Le Rita Hayworth features chorizo & poivrons, Le Veronika Lake contains jambon cru, mozzarella & parmesan. The inference is that Rita was hotter than Veronica; that seems debatable to me. 

What it does reveal is that the Metoo movement never quite achieved the same traction in France as in other Western countries. Aside from gender politics, I don't think it's feels right to name dishes after people, unless the name memorialises the chef who created the dish in the first place. Otherwise it seems a little cannibalistic.

Last time we were in Sete we managed to catch the 3pm waterbus back to Meze. Maybe we've relaxed even more these days, it was apparent that by the time we'd settled-up at the cafe catching the mid-afternoon boat was going to be tricky. Making a dash for it wasn't an option, with temperatures in the mid thirties anything quicker than an amble risked heat stroke.

The later boat was at 5pm, meaning we had over two hours to spend somewhere else in Sete. We decided to walk towards the fishing port on the seaward side of the town. We tried to stay in the shadows but that wasn't always possible. 

Then we found a shadier way back to the waterbus pier using the narrow backstreets behind the port

The area was more characterful and multicultural than the Parisian looking boulevards around Avenue Victor Hugo. Sete has ferry links to Morocco and Algeria. When we first visited the town in the early noughties the Arabic connection was quite evident. It seems more mixed now, with as many people of West African heritage as Algerian.

With half an hour or so to spare before we needed to be back at the quayside, we found a shady cafe and ordered a couple of beers. We talked through what next. According to France Meteo and Aemet, the Spanish weather service, the heatwave seems to have set in for the next couple of weeks.

The coolest place we have is when we are driving with the cab aircon on full blast. Let's head for Spain we decided, it may well be just as hot on the Costa Brava but at least it will be a comfortable drive there.

. 

 )

le Sud

Yesterday we headed south down the A75 from Massiac towards Millau. It's one of my favourite drives, partly because the southern Causse are spectacular - a dessicated looking limestone plateaux punctured by ancient volcanic cones and deep wooded gorges - but also more importantly, it's where 'le Sud' begins. Officially 'le Midi' is defined as the area of France south of 45° latitude. Whereas the points where the motorway rises above 1000m is marked with signs at the col, the moment when you arrival in the south is not acknowledged. It just happens a couple of kilometres south of the junction  at St Flour.

If you wish to take a moment to savour your escape from northern climes the nearby motorway aire with a view of Gustav Eiffel's famous iron railway viaduct is the nearest convenient stopping place. Positioned at 44.97° it's near enough. 

However, the question is - does 'le Midi' actually exist? I don't think it's just a romantic notion. There are some palpable differences. For example you can get ornamental olive trees in gardens north of the 45th parallel, but commercially viable olive groves are only found south of the line. In truth 'le Midi is an amalgam of mathematical truth, geographical fact and cultural affiliation. However it's obvious when you have arrived - you are struck by a pang of recognition like bumping into an old friend that you haven't seen for ages.

Purely in terms of appearance there is little difference between Massiac in the Cantal department and Millau in Occitania, similar looking narrow winding streets of austere stone or cement faced houses, often shuttered even during the day. However their ambience is different. Massiac has the atmosphere of a dour hill town, we recognise its vibe having lived 1000' up in the Pennines for almost forty years. Millau feels more vivacious, it exudes a southern  pizazz that is difficult to define exactly, but you can sense it.

We walked from the campsite towards the town centre beneath the majestic plane trees that shade Avenue Gambetta. I felt delighted to have arrived. The road is lined with nineteenth townhouses, a stylish neighbourhood back in the day and still home to Maison Fabre, an haute couture  glove maker. The company is one of the few remaining manufacturers in  Millau specialising high class leather goods, a craft associated with town for over 1000 years. https://maisonfabre.com/fr/.

However Millau is not especially exclusive or up-market like many of the old towns in Provence or the Cote d'Azur. Indeed some of the  backstreets are somewhat grungy. It seems to be left leaning too, the offices of the French communist party and the ANP (New Anti-capitalist Party)  were plastered with an outpouring of revolutionary zeal  like a bullshit bingo card for armchair Trotskyists.

The town is also a centre for outdoor adventure sports - whitewater rafting on the Tarn at Parc Aqua Vagues, hiking and mountain biking trails on the Le Plateau du Larzac, and paragliding from the top of the Pouncho d'Agast which overlooks the town. 

The latter activity is unmissable, its aficionados circle the peak from dawn 'til dusk like day-glo vultures.

We're adrenalin avoidant, our main aim was to find somewhere for lunch. Millau has many appealling looking cafés and restaurants but we decided to stick with an old favourite, 'Les Colonnes'. 

 Situated in the corner of Place Maréchal Foch, the café is so named because a colonnaded arcade runs along the west side of the big square. 

In terms of conforming to English stereotypes of what is typically French, offhand I can't think of anywhere that quite so readily ticks so many boxes - the square is named after a military hero of 'La Republique; two enormous plane trees, planted in 1906 gives shade from the fierce noonday sun, an elegant fountain provides the focal point, a pleasing mix of buildings from different eras surrounds it, down a narrow street you get a glimpse of the rocky hills of the Cevennes to the west. It's all very pleasing.

This is before you get to the street theatre. We  arrived  at Les Colonnes just before noon As Église Notre-Dame de L'Espinasse  tolled twelve the cafés in the square began to fill. Church bells competed with a series of random clanks emanating from the nearby streets. I couldn't place the noise, it was only later when we wandered past rows of shops with closed security shutters  I realised that it was the sound of dozens of  local businesses shutting-up shop on the dot. The French mass noon shut-down always catches me out - when driving down the autoroute and the traffic mysteriously evaporates - you know its 12.05pm!

Across the square les heures du déjeuner unfolded to order too. At eight minutes past twelve the solid double doors of École élémentaire Paul Bert opened and a few dozen primary school kids emerged and were matched off crocodile fashion with minders at the front and rear. A gaggle of local retirees arrived at the restaurant and the waiting-on staff quickly rearranged the furniture next to us to accommodate them.

By now there were a couple of dozen people waiting to be served. The young staff were brilliant, orders were quickly taken and dishes appeared magically from the small kitchen beyond the bar. In her twenties Gill worked in kitchens and waited-on, she's an 'order of service' aficionado. She was impressed!To make sure everyone is attended to promptly in a busy restaurant takes hard work and attention to detail - the staff at Les Colonnes were impressive, and charming too, no stereotypical surly French waiters here!

Despite France's growing addiction to American style fast food chains over recent decades it is still possible to find traditional neighbourhood bistros here and there. If you exclude microstates like Monaco and Andorra, France has the highest numbers of Macdonald's fast food outlets in Europe. Given the chain is just one of many the corporate restaurant chains to be found in centres commerciale and the outskirts of towns across France then the idea that the country is still some kind of world leader for gastronomy is risible. To put it bluntly there seems to be far more fat French people than there were when we first visited here in the mid 1970s. Statistics bear this out. Chatgpt's take on the question - "Yes. A reasonable summary is: France has gone from roughly 1 adult in 15 being obese in the 1980s to around 1 in 6 today.

That's an increase of roughly 150–180% in prevalence, depending on which starting year and survey series are used."

In our experience the simple pleasures on offer at Les Colonnes, though not exactly rare, has become untypical in France. When eating out here we have been disappointed as often as delighted in recent years. This is our third visit to Les Colonnes, it bucks the trend, we've had a delightful time every time.

A two course menu du jour is available for €17. Tempting, but we chose saucisse aligot because it was reviewed favourably and we had never tried the famous dish. It's almost local, originating in the Middle Ages as a hearty offering for pilgrims heading through the Aveyron towards Santiago.

The reviewers on Google were right, the saucisse aligot was delicious. We mused for a while about whether this was the best sausage a mash we had ever eaten. We were in two minds about this, the ones we had in Greenwich a year ago were very delicious too. Now that Matthew and Kristyna have moved to Dulwich we're probably not going back to Greenwich. However, I am certain this will not be the last time we celebrate our arrival in the south with lunch at Les Colonnes.

The world is full of uncertainty and becomes ever more alarming This week's thing to worry about - an AI Armageddon. However, simple pleasures exist even in the darkest of times and a skillful human chef is always going to rustle up a more delicious saucisse aligot than a robotic one.

Drive through departments

America boasts 'fly over states', the big bit in the middle that few people visit unless they have to, like Iowa or Nebraska. The central 'great plains' are shaped  by the Mississippi's enormous watershed. France has a more modest equivalent formed by the watershed of the Loire.

We've just driven from Dreux to Bruère-Allichamps. Dreux is situated in the north of the 'Eure et Loir' - a truly watershed department, the river Eure is a tributary of the Seine, the Loir, as the name indicates, flows into its near namesake. As for the town itself the place illustrates nicely my theory about France's overlooked middle. We've used the place's unlovely Camping-car Park in the industrial outskirts a few times. It's a convenient stopping place when heading south towards the Loire and beyond. The spectacularly brutalist industrial structure overlooking the aire  frequently features in reviews, the comments tend to be disparaging.

I quite like it, brutalism was the predominating architectural style of my youth, as a mid-century adolescent, raw concrete, prog rock and existentialism shaped my outlook!

We've never made it into Dreux's 'centre ville'. On Streetview it looks nice enough, a few ancient monuments and pedestrianised shopping streets....

However that's not why the town makes the national news every so often. From time to time France's 'culture wars' hit the headlines. Generally the skirmishes tend to be risible rather than menacing. For example, this summer the mayor of Mandelieu-la-Napoule, near Cannes, relit a decade old controversy by attempting to ban the burkini on the town's beaches, uniquely making the resort somewhere you get into trouble for covering-up rather than over enthusiastically stripping off.

Intractable issues lurk beneath these absurdities. Every so often the troubled relationship between France's North African citizens and La Republique's secular values boils over. Cars get torched in the banlieues of Parisian satellite towns or the public housing blocks of Roubaix and Marseille. Pitched battles ensue between local youths and the riot police. Surprisingly Dreux often gets a mention too. About 35% of its population is of North African heritage, not something you might expect a neat country town in the middle of nowhere. Dreux is also blighted with high levels of income inequality and youth unemployment. The first time we stopped here was a few days after one of these periodic flare-ups. Wrecks of burned out cars littered the outskirts, the tarmac at the entrance to the town's centre commerciale was scorched where a barricade of burning tyres and had been erected. Today all was calm and the same centre commerciale was busy, maybe things are improving in Dreux, we speculated.

Our preferred route south towards Languedoc is to head down the free A75 motorway across the Massif Centrale south of Clermont Ferrand. We've experimented with all kinds of ways of getting from the Loire valley to Clermont Ferrand using a variety of toll free route national - directly south from Orleans using the D2020 towards Bourges and Moulins; alternatively following the Loire as it arcs southwards, using the D952 via Sancere and Nevers. Actually there is little to choose between them, they are both slow, with lots of roundabouts and villages that look depopulated and god forsaken, their only remarkable feature being over enthusiastic traffic calming and peculiarly over-designed lanp-posts.

We're definitely not in 'la belle France' hereabouts. I wondered if there was a phrase in French to describe the bleak departments in the 'middle bit'. My new travel buddy 'Chatgpt,' suggested two: 'terretoires fragile' or 'La France du vide' - empty France. The central area features strongly in the map highlighting areas of deprivation in France, along with the southwest, Brittany and the Grand Est.

Taking inspiration from my own 'moniker' '- drive through departments' - this time we decided to do exactly that. Instead of crawling down the truck choked 'route nationales'  we opted to use toll motorways - not cheap, about £50 for a journey of 200 miles. The upside is it's a lot less stressful. With the cruise control set at 90kph, trundling along equidistant from the truck in front and the one behind, the kilometres tick by. It's less exhausting. Perhaps I need to acknowledge that age is catching up with me, I definitely get more tired driving day after day than I did a decade ago. These days we are not on a shoe-string budget like we were when we first started travelling long term back in 2014, so why make things trickier than they need be for the sake of saving a bit on motorway tolls?

As you might expect travelling has changed over the last ten years, not always for the better. There are far more motorhomes than there used to be in southern Europe even outside of the crowded summer period. We were not the only ones planning an itinerant retirement! These days turning up on spec expecting to find a pitch near the Med in France in the autumn or during the winter in southern Spain is a thing of the past. You need to book ahead. Some things have improved though, for example the Campingcar Park chain of motorhome aires in France has an app that allows you to book ahead on-line. We used three on the journey south, at Dreux, Bruère-Allichamps and Massiac. The latter two, like an increasing number of the Campingcar Park sites, are situated in former Camping Municipals. 

They have a more bucolic ambience than the majority of Campingcar Parks, which inadvertently for English motorhomers hint  at the downside of most  'aires de camping-car' - they are convenient, but you are camping in a car park.

Having spent most of the post dismissing France's drive through departments as bleak and somewhat god forsaken, in fact not everywhere conforms to the stereotype. Bruère-Allichamps is a pleasant village, more prosperous looking than most, possibly because of its proximity to the city of Bourges.

The place's claim to fame is that it is located in the geographical centre of France, so I guess being the middle of somewhere means I can't really accuse it of being in the middle of nowhere! Moreover, it has an excellent traditional Boulangerie. Sadly the place had sold out of croissants and pain chocolate by the time we presented ourselves somewhat tardiy at 11.30am on a Sunday morning. The baguette was excellent however, unlike the pallid simulcra on offer in supermarkets. Maybe I'm being unfair about France's 'fragile' middle bit, but I love the south more; Mediterranean landscapes are my happy place, and that's where we will be tomorrow.

A glimpse of the Danube, then back the way we came.

While we were in Kutna Hora Matthew asked if we had decided on our route home. Our plan - drive towards Ceske Krumlov then back home through the middle of Bavaria, mainly retracing our steps but with one small detour. I explained that I was hankering to take a look at the Danube, partly out of simple curiosity, but also I had decided I needed to pay my respects to my Yanmaya forebears. 

Civilisation arrived in Europe through a series of migrations from the near east, in the south spreading across the Mediterranean from Anatolia and the fertile crescent and to the north from the Eurasian steppes. The Danube valley was a crucial northern conduit, particularly in the late Neolithic period when metallurgy was introduced into the West during the so-called 'copper age'. The Yanmaya people were critical to this development. We all learned about them in primary school as 'the Beaker People' so called because of their characteristically beaker shaped pottery. 

A few years ago Matthew and Sarah bought me a genetic test as a Christmas present. On the face of it didn't reveal any big surprises. I may be English by birth, but genetically I am pre-ordinately of Scottish and Irish extraction. However there were intriguing details. My paternal profile included relatively rare genetic trace associated with people who lived on the Atlantic fringes of Europe in the pre-Celtic era. My paternal grandmother, Elizabeth McLeod was born in Caithness. However, her father haled from the Isle of Harris, as her surname indicates. She died before I was born and my Dad did not speak about her much, but he did mention she could speak some Gaelic. From this it would be reasonable to regard her as having a Celtic heritage, but that is not quite the whole story. Though she may have spoken a Celtic language what her genes revealed is that her forbears predated the arrival of the Celts. My grandmother's ancestors were  already living in the Western Isles when the first Celtic people migrated there over 2000 years ago.

My maternal line revealed even older roots. My mother carried a gene shared by fewer than 3% of people in Western Europe. However, it is commonplace in northern Iraq, northeastern Turkey and Iran. It reveals a present day link to the westward migration of Yamaya peoples between 3000 - 2000 BCE. As the MP Jo Cox famously asserted, "We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us". What genetics reveals is the notion of  common humanity is not some kind of left-leaning sociological aspiration but rooted in biological fact. So my desire to view the Danube was a nod towards a common Indo-European heritage and a moment to remember my mother who gifted me some steppe people's genes.

Matthew made the point that we  must have crossed the Danube in 2000 when we drove to Croatia via Germany and Austria. I can't fault his logic, but I have no recollection of the river whatsoever. It raises the question can you claim to have experienced something if you can't remember it? 

In truth, faced with plotting a route homewards there were also more practical matters on our mind than the history of human migration in Europe. We were still trapped in the middle of a heatwave with temperatures in the upper thirties across Germany and France. Meteo France hinted at the possibility of slightly cooler conditions on the Channel coast in four days time. In sweltering temperatures the coolest place is in the cab with the Aircon on max. Driving is a lot more comfortable than being parked in a stellplatz without shade. So we planned to get from the southern Bohemia to a campsite near Dieppe with three stops, then stay there for four nights until it was time to catch the ferry home. 

The quickest way from Camping Olsina to the motorway was to head south towards Linz in Austria. That wasn't really an option as it required an Austrian motorway pass. The alternative was more picturesque, northwest on smaller roads through the forested hills that form the old border between Bohemia and Bavaria. 

It looked all a bit Hansel and Gretel with ancient villages nestled in forested valleys and lonely cottages deep in the woods which might we well have once harboured a kindly seeming crone with murderous intent.

As we approached Passau we hit a busier dual carriageway. There are lots of roadworks on German autobahns and sometimes the signage is ambiguous. We missed the Passau bypass and ended up on a road running along the northern bank of the Danube. 

The ancient centre was on the opposite bank, very grand and Baroque looking as befits one of Central Europe's most historic small cities. 

The road followed the Danube for a few kilometres. It definitely looks like a river that fully deserves 'mighty' as a prefix, having served as a major east/west conduit for people and goods for millennia. And it still does, enormous cargo barges and even larger river cruise boats plying its languid waters.

We took the '3' autobahn northwest towards Nuremberg, the road follows the Danube valley but you rarely get a glimpse of it, apart from the couple of times it crosses the river on a tall concrete viaduct. Given the heat we decided that my somewhat romantic notion of finding a stellplatz by the Danube actually made no sense whatsoever and what we really needed to do was to press on as far as possible enabling us to cross southern Germany with just one stop.

The north of Bavaria around Nuremberg used to form a part of the ancient kingdom of Frankonia - a separate Germanic tribe who moved westward during the dark ages settling among other places in the north of France - hence its name. Frankonia still has a distinctive dialect and local culture, but given the lack of Stellplatz in the countryside west of Nuremberg, it doesn't seem to attract many visitors. 

The stellplatz at Wolframs Eschenbach maybe an attempt to attract more people to the area. It is  well designed with a contactless pay point. There is a cycle path connecting the village to some leisure lakes to the south and information boards about birdwatching. All we wanted was somewhere to stay, anyway any desire to sightsee would have been curtailed by the arrival of thundery showers that had been threatening all day.

Next day we drove 350kms from Wolframs- Eschenbach to the Campingcar Park in Saint Avold in France. Each European motorway network presents unique challenges. In Germany, away from conurbations, long stretches remain as dual carriageways.

This, combined with the fact that not all autobahns have an upper speed limit, makes driving on them a peculiar experience. The inner lane is often occupied by an endless convoy of trucks with their satnav's set to 90kph. The second lane is owned by rocket propelled Mercedes. I opted to trundle along with the trucks, it makes for a very tedious drive. It feels safe enough until you hit roadworks with contraflows and there are many. 

Here the lanes are narrower than in the UK and separated by concrete barriers. Usually I'm not phased by being in a right hand drive vehicle in Europe, I drive more miles per annum in Europe than I do at home. Most of the time driving on busy autobahns is much less eventful than navigating the M25 or M1. however the traffic management around roadworks is stressful and unavoidable, some autobahns are almost 90 years old and many are being upgraded.

We made it from the Czech Republic to Haut Normandy with only three overnight stops, using Campingcar Park Aires in France which we booked on-line using their app.

 

We were pleased to reach the campsite near Dieppe where we could chill-out, both literally and figuratively, for the next few days before our ferry.  

Our plan - to find a campsite close to the Avenue Vert cycleway. We have stayed at two previously - Camping Sainte-Claire at Neufchatel-en-Bray and Camping Des 2 Rivières near Arques-la-Bataille. Each has its charms and both have minor irritations. The first has a beautiful garden-like ambiance but is a tad prissy and over-managed, the second is centred on a big fishing lake and surrounded by lovely wooded chalk downs, however the facilities are quite old. We opted for the latter, but ended up on a small, uneven, very shady pitch and spent the next few days grumbling about the site's minor inconveniences.

However it was good to stop. The weather remained very hot, but not intolerably so, and nights were more comfortable with temperatures dropping into the mid-teens. We managed to get out on the Avenue Vert twice, a couple of 20km rides which seemed quite enough in the heat of the afternoon.

The old railway follows the valley of the Bethune. One of the loveliest things about France is its bucolic river valleys, some epic like the Dordogne or Lot, others more modest in scale, like the Bethune, but idyllic all the same.

In the stillness of the first days of July the landscape is hauntingly beautiful. More so because the trail was quiet, it's peacefulness only momentarily broken by the brief appearance of mini-peletons of lycra clad men - the Tour de France had kicked-off that morning. The moment is marked nationally by every male with a road bike in the country cosplaying the event in day-glo solidarity. Mass parallel participation doesn't guarantee national success, the last time a Frenchman won the Tour de France was in 1986.

Otherwise we just mooched about. The campsite has commercial size washing machines, so we laundered our bed linen and towels, saving us a job when we got home.

A nearby food truck on the Via Verde sells crepes and coffee to passing cyclists. We decided to have lunch there. The crepes were by far the worst we have ever eaten.

France still has Sunday trading laws. Shops shut around 1.00pm. So we exited the campsite mid-morning, bought some things in the Auchun on the outskirts of Dieppe, then parked in the aire next to the ferry port to wait for boarding in the mid-afternoon.

Whenever we use a cross channel ferry we send telepathic messages of sympathy to the poor sod who gets randomly checked at customs. This time it was our turn, except it was security, not customs that decided to pounce on us. Ever since Brexit physical checks of the van have ramped up, what was once a desultory glance around checking for migrants has become an in-depth scrutiny of the van's nooks and crannies searching for goodness knows what.

At least the people this time were not carrying machine guns. However they pounced upon the small blue Camping Gaz cylinder in the rear garage which we use with our Cadac BBQ and two ring stove. We were directed to a building to the side where a senior gruppenfuhrer claimed we were unable to board as regulations did not allow the carriage loose LPG cylinders and we must return to Dieppe to dispose of the item safely at an approved Camping Gaz outlet.

Gill is impressive in these circumstances, firstly enquiring how we might do that on a Sunday afternoon, then handing the cylinder to 'Monsieur l' Emploi-Valeur' - pointing out that the cylinder was almost empty anyway and presented little risk. After a bit more ritualised bureaucratic harassment the safety officer relented and said he would allow aboard 'on this occasion'.

We concluded that the French border officials must have a harassment quota to maintain and we just happened to fall victim to it. We have carried Camping Gaz cylinders of all kinds over the Channel for almost half a century, small disposable ones in Karrimore panniers on the back of our touring bikes in the 1980s, bigger ones stashed in the boot the car over two decades 'camping with the kids' and in our motorhome garage since 2013. Nobody has ever questioned it, and in fact when I checked later DFDS regulations specifically state that Motorhomes and Caravans can carry up to three GPL cylinders with to a total weight of 47kg and refillable gas systems such as Alugaz or Gaslow are regarded as 'integral equipment' so are not covered by the limit. In the end I think the experience was simply an example of post-Brexit harassment.

It's a four hour crossing from Dieppe to Newhaven. We departed at 6pm, but the time difference meant it was 9pm. BST when we docked. As usual we headed straight to the car park by the dock gates. It's not particularly big and used as a staff car park by the port workers, but so far we've always managed to find a place to stay overnight. The area is next to the port's lorry park, so it's not the most peaceful place to sleep. This time the potential for a broken night's sleep was ramped up by the fact the England were playing Mexico in the World Cup. The kick-off was at 3am. and pubs had been given special dispensation to open until five in the morning. How rowdy might it get?

Very, we suspected ten minutes after we had turned- in. A group of lads waiting at Newhaven station, a few yards away, decided to amuse themselves by throwing things at some metal object - maybe bricks at a skip we suspected. This was accompanied by a lot of yelling and screaming and the sound of breaking glass. We probably use motorhome parking places instead of campsites about 20% of the time, mostly it feels safe enough, but occasionally you can feel vulnerable. Only once have we felt truly worried about our personal safety and that was in Bantry in Ireland. Happily the small mob at the station caught the last train and the rest of the night passed without incident apart from trucks revving in the small hours. We woke to the news that England had beaten Mexico in a close match and consoled ourselves with the thought that we were probably feeling much perkier than the people who had stayed-up to witness the victory live.

Still, we had a long drive ahead of us. Plenty of time to moan about the disfunctional state of service areas on the M1, the intensity of the traffic and needlessly aggressive driving. Welcome home!  And we were welcomed home because Sarah, Rob and Nico had arrived a few hours earlier, planning to stay for a week in Buxton to see the carnival.

The weather was fabulous and it was great not to descend into a post trip slump, with just the pair of us rattling around a four bedroomed house.

My usual antidote to a post trip slump is to book a ferry for the next one. That's not possible at the moment. Next week I'm booked-in ror a small op as a day case. The result of the biopsy might be consequential or not, but until I get the results we can't really make firm plans for the autumn. If we are good to go the plan is to do something fairly straightforward - a trip to the Languedoc, Catalonia, Rioja and the Basque Country maybe - we shall see.