Just drifting

Thursday June 21st

We found a little piece of heaven today. We are in the Drome Valley, a little north of Provence, having come through some stunning alpine scenery. We are camped just west of Die ( a pretty place in spite of its name) in a spacious and peaceful site (Camping le Condamine) next to the river Drome. A Roman villa once stood here. The campsite owner’s father discovered a mosaic floor in 1974 (now reconstructed in the museum of Die) and the site was declared a site of special archaeological interest. 

We arrived to the incredible singing of cicadas, and later, we witnessed the amazing cloud of white moths that appear here like magic as soon as the daylight dies. Walking in the dry river margins where flash flooding is clearly a feature we marvelled at how ants have so successfully populated its snowy white mud, right up to the waters edge. Insect life has been very apparent throughout our travelling. Black flies plagued our last camp, we have both been midge and mosquito supper and we still have some ant passengers from Italy. It’s not humans who rule the world; it’s insects.

Unable to sleep tonight (it is very warm) I am listening to the sounds of the night and imagining myself in the Roman villa, surrounded by the mountains, the florally abundant meadows, the gushing milky green river, the cicadas and the Mistral providing some relief from the heat. It has been 34 degrees today, and the wind is now rocking our rig and flapping our awning such that if not in a Roman villa I could imagine myself on a boat. Tonight there are no mopeds, no barking dogs or heavy long haul traffic. There is just the sound of the river and night birds signalling their presence in the woodland. A perfume drifts in on the wind from the lavender fields close by and my senses are fully awake.

We have been in the Alps since leaving Italy and have travelled south from Grenoble, stopping for a couple of days at a lake side campsite and now heading west, then north towards Lyon as we make our way slowly home. I have decided that this part of France is one I would like to return to. The winding hairpin road passes through the crumbly mountains have been giddyingly spectacular but much easier on Hymer’s suspension and our spines than Italy’s equivalents. France somehow feels gentler than its high-heeled neighbour. To use musical adjectives, I would describe our passage through Italy as staccato where France, so far, is pianissimo. 

Friday June 22

We ‘struck camp’, resisting the call of the river for another paddle and walk. Bess had enjoyed it too much yesterday evening and is now suffering with a swollen ankle. Poor dog! She hasn’t fared well this holiday. She picked up something in her ear after running in long grass at Lucca and it was evidently hurting her. We can’t find anything in her ear but we are a bit suspicious that it has affected her hearing. Not that we can be sure it isn’t her usual wayward stubbornness of course! On top of that and the sprained ankle she put her nose on an electric fence this morning.

Leaving the beautiful Drome valley we entered the Rhône valley and what a river the Rhône is! Wide and navigable, it is a highway for the vineyards and the fruit growers. Traversing another, albeit smaller mountain range on our way to the Loire valley we are now up in the cool of a forested National Park area, in a very peaceful aire. To camp here is free, spaces are generous and we are surrounded by nature instead of urbanisation. The French do motorhoming so well and communities are generous in their provision for it. Bon idee, France, et merci beaucoup!

On leaving Italy

Leaving Piano di Sorrento on Thursday it was raining, something of a relief after the heat of the previous days. We’d had five days camping in the lemon orchard, Oasi Verde, with the company of two other motorhomes for the last couple of days. It had been a great place to stay, in spite of our ant invasion and in spite of the difficulties getting around the area. The campsite owners had kindly brought us little homemade curd cheeses in the morning and some delicious pastries one afternoon. Gareth enjoyed a couple of hours taking photos of their rustic lifestyle and when we were leaving they gave us a huge bag of lemons! 

We were touched by the gift, though I couldn’t think what to do with so many lemons while travelling around in a motorhome (“when life gives you lemons make lemonade”??), and then, when they gave us our bill it was significantly more than we were expecting! And this is what we don’t ‘get’ about Italy. So many things turn out to be more than the price quoted. Wrong footed by the gift we paid the bill and left feeling stung and bemused. Our time in Italy needed to be curtailed for the sake of our bank balance, so we set off, using the toll roads for the sake of speed, Hymer’s sake and our own.

Now I have been told by my family that I am painting a very one sided, negative picture of Italy, and that I should say more about the highlights. However, it’s not my style to gloss over things. For anyone thinking of travelling into Italy like we have done it’s good to be warned. Our experience of unexpected charges and costs is not unique as confirmed by other motorhomers we’ve met along the way. A British couple who have been travelling around Italy since April (also with a dog), like us had endeavoured not to use tolls and to use ‘free’ or at least cheap camping aires. Like us they were heading home, having munched through their funds much more quickly as a result of having to resort in the end to tolls, and unexpected charges everywhere. They told us that in Florence they were charged 17 Euro for two ice creams! Italians know how to make delicious ice cream and Gellateria are everywhere, but that’s extortion! 

Italy is a staggeringly beautiful country. It’s more mountainous than we expected, and we have been amazed by how towns and villages have developed in what look to us to be totally inaccessible places. We have wandered into some delightful towns (those on flatter territory), like Lucca, famous for its completely intact town wall, and where a choir practising added to the tranquil, sunset-and-lamp-lit evening. Or Fontanellato where a beautiful old castle forms the centre point of the town and a Sunday market flowed all around and into every street. Fontanellato also had an ingenious aire. Motorhomes are provided with shade under the cover of solar panels which presumably supply the town and the aire with electricity. It felt good, knowing that the few euros we paid for our electricity that night was coming from the sun rather than fossil fuel.

Our impression is, though, that Italy is a country in trouble. We saw lots of unfinished and abandoned projects, like one of their amazing, curled suspended road bridges, hanging, incomplete with its steel reinforcing ragged and rusting. I’d had a very long and interesting chat with one of the young women who had joined us at Oasi Verde. She is Swiss, married to an Italian, but they have chosen to live and raise a family in Switzerland. That’s a no brainer, it seems, after she explained how everyone in Italy has to pay 40% tax and how the suicide rate is high for that reason. She said that so much of the country’s taxes is creamed off that projects are often not completed. Having lived in Italy and married to an Italian hasn’t made her immune to being treated as a foreigner, she explained. Apparently Italians have one set of rules for themselves and another for foreigners. This was her own experience, of course, and maybe her anti-establishment views were heavily influenced by the fact that her husband, originally from the poorer south, Puglia, is a singer of old rebellious country folk songs which are apparently having a revival. There is a strong push, too, in the selling of “Solo Italiano” goods (Italian made) and we haven’t seen any imported French wines in the supermarkets, for example.

So, we made it out of the Sorrento Peninsular and headed north, on the autostrade. Just past Rome we stopped in a services to make coffee and for Gareth to check our rear lights (we’d had a rear end bump some days earlier). Still wondering what to do with my sack of lemons and Gareth insisting we bin them (he was still smarting from the campsite bill), I offered them to another (Italian) motorhomer walking by with his dog. He accepted them with delight, but maybe he then felt obliged to help us somehow, and he got involved with the light-checking. His help was totally unnecessary and from Gareth’s point of view, an intrusion, but it shows another side of Italy; the keen-to-help side that we have come across a few times. Our encounters have for the most part been really friendly, and our dogs get lots of attention. We have never felt unsafe, even in Lucca where there were reports of motorhome break-ins.

Later on that day we developed an electrical problem. It proved to be a tricky one as in spite of Gareth’s scouring of the handbook and replacement of some fuses we had to call the breakdown service. After ages waiting to get through on the phone and another hour and a half of waiting, a breakdown truck arrived. The guy was not a mechanic and he spoke no English. He put us on to his boss whose English was good enough to tell us that we could manage without windscreen wipers and fan and that we should carry on! In spite of the fact that we’d come through rain and that more black clouds were threatening he told Gareth that no rain was forecast and as it was too late in the day to have anyone fix us we may as well continue on our way. We were not having that! So, after a lot of arguing and rain, which the pick-up driver confirmed to his boss on the phone, we were loaded up and taken back the way we had come, parked up in a noisy lay-by and waited until we could be fixed next morning.

Friday morning and we were at the appointed garage. We enjoyed an amble around the sleepy little town before getting our van back, fixed. We were told it was a fuse. Gareth was puzzled because he thought he’d checked all of the associated fuses. Off we set again and less than 250m along the road, the problem reappeared. Back to the garage where they grudgingly investigated, told us to get it fixed at home and in the meantime to keep replacing the fuse each time it goes. They generously gave us two fuses and sent us on our way. Gareth took us back to the lay-by and set about his own investigation. Noticing that the fuse blew each time we went into reverse he eventually discovered that the bump we’d had had slightly bent the reversing light holder and it was causing a short circuit. So, 60 Euros down and memories of a scary ride on the back of a low loader as a souvenir, we set off north again.

We finally arrived in France on Sunday evening having stopped over in Lucca, taking a look at Cinque Terre and then Fontanellato with the solar panel aire. It was a fabulously scenic journey punctuated with lots of tunnels that are a feature of driving around Italy’s mountains. The final tunnel, getting us into France through the Col di Susa was 13km long! Such tunnels are amazing feats of engineering. This one had taken six years to build and the feeling of there being a whole Alp above our heads as we drove through, boggled our brains. What other creature is capable of burrowing that deep? It’s best not to suffer from claustrophobia going into such tunnels, though they are spacious and punctuated with escape tunnels. Being given as we entered a “What to do in case of emergency” card illustrated with people running perks ones adrenaline for sure! 

We learned that there is also a physics laboratory within that tunnel system. They are looking for neutrinos - tiny particles so small that can apparently pass through the earth without touching anything!

Sunday’s exit from Italy cost us 96.4 Euro, including the toll for the tunnel - a shock at 59.60 Euro. Italy gave us that one last punch in the stomach having already slapped us in the face at the last service station where we had to pay 10 Euro per litre for diesel.

So, it’s goodbye Italy and hello France.

That was Italy

This is our fourth and last day on the Sorrento Peninsular. We and the dogs are recovering from a wonderful but exhausting day yesterday. We went to Capri for lunch! I kid you not! Sally, Paul and co took a boat from Positano and we went by car, train, ferry, and taxis (interspersed with lots of walking) and we all met on the island in the harbour. After a crammed in ride on the funicular railway, Emily (Gareth’s niece) Googled us all to a shady beach side restaurant where the Med shimmered and stroked the rocky shore. It was a short but sweet trip, constrained as we were by the ferry crossing times, but enough to give us a glimpse of a Mediterranean idyll and to have some precious time with Gareth’s sister and family.

Today I am reflecting on the phenomenon of tourist travel. It’s the ants that have invaded our camper this morning that have made me realise how like them we are. So much of our excursion yesterday could possibly be seen from a distant perspective like ants processing into every nook and cranny of this amazing part of the world. There are the initial scouts who find a place that can be exploited in some way and soon we are all over it. We build, and build until we have changed the environment completely and made it our own. Positano, where Sally and Paul have rented a villa, is spectacular in its verticality. The Amalfi coast, right around this peninsular, is sheer cliff as if the ground has lifted up from the Earth. Houses literally hang off the cliffs and the roads are like spaghetti twisting and winding around and through the rock. You have to be something of a mountain goat to get around here as most of the walking is down, down, down, and further down or up, up, and up long twisting stepped alley ways. Pity anyone needing mobility aids who thought this a good holiday destination!

Being an area where the volcanic soil is rich for exploitation, there are fruit orchards everywhere.  Its climate and its beauty, natural and man-made, inevitably draws the tourists. Cruise ships pull in wherever there’s a crazy harbour and people disembark to pour into the shops, bars and restaurants. Motorbikers take on the challenge of a drive along the Amalfi coast road. Sun-seekers fly in and take up residence in the cool hotels and holiday villas, and fill the tiny stretches of beach that are ‘accessible’. Locals, apparently immune to risk weave around on their mopeds or pile into the local buses though a bus ride is definitely not for the faint-hearted; if you can get on one that is. 

We were told that travelling around Italy on public transport with dogs is easy. It turned out not be so. It seems to be very much at the discretion of the drivers or ticket staff whether to accept dogs; with muzzles or at all. We have had to resort to taxis most of the time and they’re expensive, working out at 8 Euro per kilometre! They are scary as hell, too! The driver who took us to Positano on Sunday drove at speed around the hairpins hanging off the cliff, overtaking blindly and sending messages on his mobile phone at the same time! We were trying to take in the unbelievable scenery while being flung from one side of the car to the other, just as the dogs were, poor things. Fortunately, the condition of the road is very good. Had it been as bad as those we came here on, we would have been in plaster casts by now! 

So now we are preparing to make our way north again and into easier territory. A motorhome, dogs and a dicky hip are not suited to this environment. We can chalk it up to experience and include it as a significant episode in our ‘adventure’. I hope I can retain the amazing images I have of the place because it’s impossible to do it justice with photographs.

Well, we wanted adventure and we are having one. They say you must take the rough with the smooth and on Friday that’s what we had - literally. We arrived in Pompeii, the black mass of Vesuvius hiding her head in the clouds above us. To get here in time to meet up with Sally, Paul and co (family from Oregon, US) we have had two long days driving on what must be some of the worst roads in Europe. I must point out, as I tell this tale, that in budgeting for this trip, we planned, with the help of AA routing, the fastest non-toll route. 

So, on Thursday we left the cool heights of our camp in the topmost corner of Italy where it touches Austria and Switzerland.  We slowly descended 1500 metres from the Alpine spectacle trying to remain civil with each other as we missed turns. Satnav wasn’t cooperating. She seemed determined to get us onto the toll roads and she got a tongue lashing from each of us on different occasions. Eventually, after wearing 10 hours of driving we got to a lovely old walled town called Sansepolcro and parked up for the night.

An early start on Friday morning had us moving along our route without too many hiccups and then we came upon a diversion. From there things went downhill very quickly….. or rather, they went uphill rather steeply and narrowly and windingly for miles and miles. We were lost. The scenery was amazing, though there was nowhere to stop and appreciate it, the roads being so narrow and treacherous. At one point we had to go into a hill top fortress town that literally hung on a cliff edge.

You know what they say about all roads lead to Rome? Well, so it appears. Whether we were in a deep rocky gorge or on top of a forested mountain on tiny single track lanes we kept seeing road signs for Roma. So, for lack of any other way out of our predicament (Satnav had resigned) we followed them and eventually found our way to a main autostrade and accepted that Ms Satnav was probably right all along about toll roads.

A bridge too far

After another long day’s driving we got to Naples and ‘modern’ Pompeii.That’s where the real nightmare started. Directions to our campsite took us through a crummy area with alley ways to navigate rather than roads. More and more convinced that we were heading into inescapable territory and with cars and mopeds determinedly squeezing past us and beeping manically, I saw a sign for the campsite, but the entry appeared impassable. We overshot it anyway and then found ourselves at a bridge that looked too low for us to get under. We could do nothing else but pull up and the Friday night home-going Italian traffic continued to squeeze and beep around us. I was taking my life in my hands getting out of the van to see if there was any chance of getting through and as I did so a ‘nice young man’ stopped, oblivious to creating a further obstacle for his fellow commuters, and offered to help. Gareth was by this time under the bridge with his measuring tape and with centimetres to spare we were able to get under the bridge, turn around and follow the nice young man who said he could take us where we were trying to go.

Back in the bumpy rat run we lost him, saw the campsite entry road again just as a car was coming out. The driver indicated that we couldn’t go that way and signed that we should turn around! Later we could see that what he was actually telling us was that there was another way in from the other side. Heading back to the main street (I use the word ‘main’ kindly), the nice young man caught up with us, collected another seemingly lost smart Pilote motorhome and took us all back down the rat run….. and UP the IMPASSABLE alley way!!! We seemed to have no choice but to go with it, wincing as we watched the beautiful, brand new Pilote inch, manoeuvre, scrape and grind through the ruts and past overhanging branches. We suffered in a resigned silence as Hymer did the same.

We did get to the campsite. The owner explained that we’d come the wrong way! Ha! Like we needed to be told!  The owner’s wife was most welcoming, though, and explained that the town was badly damaged during the last Vesuvius eruption in 1937(?) and nobody has bothered repairing anything since. Can’t blame them, I suppose, but it doesn’t do much for tourism, unless you’re a masochistic tourist! 

We don’t know what happened to Pilote. They had been brought to our site by Nice Young Man and it turned out not to be their site. They looked grey and sick as they drove off.

Campeggio Giuliana

Anyway, we had a pitch, we could see Vesuvius, the ground on which the dogs could run freely for a bit was volcanic ash, we were given a refreshing welcoming drink by our hostess and we settled. Sleep was again difficult, though, as the Italians themselves, people and dogs, don’t appear to need sleep. There was a firework display somewhere at midnight, mopeds squealed around the stony streets, and dogs serenaded each other through the hot night.

In the morning (Saturday) the owner greeted us with the most delicious sweet coffee. I’m not a coffee drinker but I am now sold on whatever concoction it is that we were served, and it certainly revived me and restored my bonhomie. 

Ancient Pompeii

Gareth had learned that we could park for free all day at the large supermarket Auchan, Pompeii instead of paying extortionate parking prices at the antiquity itself. Having felt such enormous admiration for his ability to get us through the previous day’s labyrinth, I now worried about how his hip would cope with the 20 minute walk plus walking around Pompeii itself. But we got there, bought our entry tickets, made contact with Sally and co and went in.

The place is huge! Evidently it was a powerful, very civilised and affluent place to live. It is amazing both in terms of its antiquity as well as the scale of the disaster it suffered. The scale of the excavation is mind boggling too. Listening in to some of the tours we picked up a lot of the story (French and English guide books had sold out) and had it not been so hot and us both, plus dogs, feeling the strain, I would have loved to see more. The villas, with their tiled floors and some of the wall decorations still in tact, views out over the Bay of Naples and the mountains around, must have been sumptuous…..until being buried in red hot ash, of course.

The Sorrento Peninsular

A shop in the monstrous Auchan, and then we were headed for our campsite. After our experience in Pompeii we were a bit nervous about what we might encounter. It’s an area of steep-sided mountains and the Bay of Naples is spectacular. My great-grandfather was a seaman, one they call a Cape Horner. Apparently, he claimed that Swansea Bay is more beautiful than Naples, so I wasn’t expecting much. Now, I know he was probably saying it to please my great-grandmother and to show how pleased he was to be coming home from his time at sea.

We didn’t believe Satnav when she got us to our destination. Cursing and carrying on up the hill we started to worry about ending up on the Amalfi Coast road, which is no-go for motorhomes Given what we’ve already seen of the road system we couldn’t imagine how much crazier it could be. I have to say that I have enormous relief and gratitude for how Gareth had got us around without sustaining any serious damage, either to us, the Hymer……..or the crazy people, like the girl on the moped who leaned out towards us as they squeezed past us and narrowly missed having her head chopped off by our wing mirror.

Anyway, We turned around and it turned out that Satnav had been right this time. When we saw the entry way, though, we said “That’s it! Let’s just go home!” With the very kind reassurance and help from the farmer who owns the site (Oasi Verde agricampeggio) we found ourselves in a justifiably named oasis, on a terrace in the middle of a large fruit orchard. We have it all to ourselves at the moment. No one is telling us that the dogs have to be tied up, so they are enjoying themselves sniffing about or lazing in the shade, and I am writing this under the shade of our awning listening to the birds. Last night we sat out and there were fire flies. Today I can finally sunbathe a bit and we don’t have to move Hymer for a couple of days at least. 

I don’t know what to make of Italy yet.

So…….now Tuesday, we are in Uberlingen, at Lake Konstanz (or Bodensee) in Southern Germany. Things have improved a bit in terms of our communication issues; maybe because we can’t communicate with anyone else, having barely any German between us and it’s nice to have someone to talk to when you’re far from home (as I write we have moved on to Germany)

It’s hot, and we aren’t really well equipped for heat. Neither of us likes heat very much, so I hope we will acclimatise before we get into southern Italy. But we are enjoying the trip. After Sedan we made our way towards the Rhinelands, toward a winery near Kandel that showed up on the Park for a Night app. The parking was literally in the winery yard behind the hostelry. It was quite charming and we had a lovely meal - a cheese dish for me and some cheesy noodles for Gareth. Delicious! Gareth had beer and I had their own Reisling which is apparently served diluted with water. Walking around the village next day I was struck by the lack of evidence of any children and wondered if we were in Hamelin, home of the Pied Piper who had maybe come back again to take away the children. Germany is, I know, suffering from being an ageing population and therefore very open to immigration and ‘new blood’. We noted a few storks nests perched atop barn roofs, and there were definitely stork chicks in them. Whether or not the storks are on strike as regards their role in generating new Germans, I can’t say. At any rate, the country seems to be well set up for the older generation and their motorhomes, which is an advantage for us, of course.

Next day (Monday) we set off for the Black Forest area (or Schwarzwald). Gareth decided he didn’t need my navigation ‘skills’ so fell for the charms of our lady satnav and asked her to take us to Baden-Baden. Not wishing to interfere I was impressed that Gareth seemed now confident about heading into another large town and I sat back to enjoy the ride. I should have shut up, though, when we got there, instead of rubbing in the fact that he’d messed up. It seems he’d imagined Baden-Baden to be a nice little town of wooden houses and cuckoo clocks. If he’d asked me I would have pointed out that the map showed it was a large town.

Anyway, we eventually stopped alongside a park, had a snack and tried to converse with an elderly man who seemed to think that if he talked to us long enough we’d eventually understand. I think he did try telling us how to get to a place we thought might have free overnight camping, but we ignored the instruction and headed instead for a place I identified on the map. After spending some time with his other pal, Google, Gareth could see that my plan was a good one. I didn’t gloat.

After a fabulous drive up into the Black Forest on the high route, Schwarzwaldhochstrasse, we found a delightful spot in a town called Schiltach. It had its own resident motorhomer ‘Mr Helpful’ whose wife disowned him every time he started up a very loud rambling conversation (in good English, however) but Schiltach is a gorgeous little town and the aire is very central and next to a river that the dogs had enormous fun splashing about in and keeping their beady spaniel eyes on the ducks. There is a down side, inevitably. A church, its spire prominent over the timber framed town and with a green hilly forest background, seems to think that everyone within hearing distance of its bells needs to be up and on their knees in the chapel, praying at 6.00 am!!! I’m a heathen in respect of church going so it didn’t go down too well, especially as the heat had meant we hadn’t slept until it was cool enough in the early hours.

Chatting in the morning to Eric (Mr Helpful) we learned that tourism in the Black Forest is not what it was. We saw some small ski slopes on the Schwarzwaldhochstrasse but we also saw numerous hotels, faded, closed and crumbling. Eric seemed most concerned that we partake of the joys of Schiltach and wondered whether he was on a commission from the local businesses. In the 60’s my grandparents travelled regularly through Europe, camping and later, caravanning. The Black Forest region was one of their favourites, but it seems everywhere has its day. The most poignant thing for me about the high road tour was it’s similarity with British Columbia and it felt just like the drive up to my son William’s place in Sun Peaks. I felt a real pang, missing him. It made me think fondly, too, of my sister and her family who also live in BC. I also worried about my grandson Reuben’s worries that he won’t remember me when I get home, so we took some photos at the top and will be sending them as post cards for the grandchildren.

So tonight we are in a large aire in Uberlingen. It’s nothing like as picturesque as Schiltach and isn’t the idyll of motorhoming sold in motorhome brochures. It’s another Park and Ride in fact. All services are provided very cheaply plus a free bus ticket. We are impressed by the motorhoming etiquette that exists. Everyone here is most respectful of each others’ space (a bay large enough for even the biggest motorhomes and for an awning. It’s a cheap, convenient and popular stop over and  tomorrow we head towards Austria, still dreaming of that camping idyll.

Post script: it’s now Wednesday evening (I think). We eventually managed to get lakeside in the cool of the morning. Unusually for us we were up by 6.30 and ready to find somewhere watery for the dogs and a pleasant green spot to have breakfast. It does seem, in this area at least, that motorhomes are pushed away from cluttering up the lakeside. We parked neatly where we could dunk the dogs in the water and take a short walk before it got too hot, but were then told, very nicely, by some council workmen that motorhomes in that area are “Verboten”. So off we went again. Stopping by a camping shop for some essential items like chairs and a table to go under the awning outside, we then set off determinedly to make some distance towards Naples. We travelled through Austria (inevitably now that we have outside furniture, it was raining!) through spectacular scenery and are now this evening camped in San Valentin in the Italian Alps. Thankfully it is cool so we might get a good nights sleep, once I’ve posted this of course.

Italy bound

 A cockerel this morning reminds me that we are in France, finally Italy bound. We’ve survived so far though we do have a few battle scars. In spite of the weeks of preparation, getting on the road was a bit of a scramble in the end and something we forgot to do was to find an app that would translate “Gareth-speak” to “Alison-speak” and vice versa! We’ve also been forced to bring with us one tooth abscess, a tummy bug and the remains of a yucky cold, plus the arthritic conditions we were already lumbered with, like Gareth’s crumbling hip.

But the adventure has begun. Wednesday got us to Canterbury, via the delightful M25 at rush hour (yes, we started out later than we intended). The torture of home time traffic isn’t something I would inflict on anyone and I marvelled at the minimal number of insanity breakouts in that cloggy flow, at least in so far as I could detect any. Goodness knows what the occupants of all those vehicles were going through while slow going traffic munched away at their living time.

Anyway, the one-of-only-three-in-the-country-aires in Canterbury (the Park and Ride on New Dover Road) was a most convenient night stop. We weren’t very clever in our choice of parking bay, though, as it was right next to the grey water and chemical toilet disposal. This became evident next morning as Motorhomes turned up next to us to defecate, some very muckily. There were some veteran vans parked up in better spots and we could sense their assessment of us as new on the scene in spite of our van being twelve years old. We are entering the Travellers’ world and it feels a bit as though we have run away to the circus. 

It was nice to stand around the vans chatting with others and absorbing their useful travelling tips and tales. We learned quite a lot that evening, including the fact that the info given on the net rarely reflects the truth on the ground. The £3.50 per night charge we were expecting to pay for the stop over turned out to be £7.00. Yes, that’s still very cheap, admittedly, but the channel crossings also suddenly were more expensive. We couldn’t get one before Friday morning anyway, which meant another day in Blighty (where does that nickname come from?). We (I mean Gareth) had picked out DFDS Dover to Dunkirk as the best crossing for the dogs, failing the Chunnel that is. DFDS provide on-deck kennels for dogs, so he thought, but then it turned out that they didn’t, and that there was an additional charge for dogs. We have two, remember.

So, costs were already running outside of our (Gareth’s) estimated budget. He has spent hours and hours, bless him, ‘burning the midnight oil’ researching, planning and budgeting this trip, including the best way to travel with dogs. Bess had a fit the night before we left, probably because she sensed something was imminent. She has had fits before and is a very stressy dog. We weren’t sure how she would cope with having to stay in the Hymer in the bowels of the ferry, left to her own devices with Pwdin, our nice-but-dim other little spaniel. We knew that Pwdin wouldn’t be a problem as she takes everything in her stride.

A day to kill around Canterbury was just as well in the end. It meant we could stock up on a few things and deal with our house purchase. Contracts were exchanged, insurances organised and instructions given to our selected letting agent to receive the keys on completion and start the process of getting us a tenant. Next day we became house owners while we were half way across the English Channel.

Another night in the Park and Ride, albeit in a better spot, and in the morning we set off for Dover. I’m a landlubber and my usual nervousness about things like aeroplanes and ships kicked in as we got to the port. Projecting my fear onto the dogs, I started worrying and fussing about them and now realise that I have a default mother hen reaction to pets as I do with the grandchildren. Once you’ve been a mother having to marshal a posse of small lively children, you never get out of the habit. In any case we had to leave the dogs, so we gave them a selection of treats and then headed for the upper decks.

Sitting watching the world go by (or in this case, a huge expanse of water) inevitably leads to mental wanderings. Thinking about travels throughout my life it occurred to me that through my and my sisters’ childhoods, our parents, who had at that time never really travelled, allowed each of us some amazing travel opportunities. In my case, at the age of ten, I went on an educational cruise around Scandinavia on the ship Devonia; I still have the scrap book journal of it somewhere. In my late teens I spent three weeks in Germany with a youth group where I met the father of my sons, my now ex husband. My sisters also had amazing experiences afforded them and all three of us spent one summer holiday at a Quaker summer school. We watched the first moon landing there. They were all wonderful, unforgettable experiences, probably brought about through my mother’s quiet influence, it occurs to me now. Our academically gifted mother was keen to provide us with a rounded education and the sorts of cosmopolitan experiences that she herself had relinquished any prospect of in order to be with our more wayward father. His influence, on the other hand, was in providing us with a sense of the wild, both in nature and in thought (as long as those wild thoughts coincided with his own of course!)

I needn’t have worried about the dogs, by the way. They were happy to see us when we got back to the vehicle and seemed none the worse for their temporary abandonment. We landed and took off along the French/Belgian border, hit rain, had a repeat of the M25 experience around Lille and headed for where we intended a night stop. Inevitably things got tricky. 

After a few hairy moments like forgetting which side of the road we should be on and driving around in circles through little villages trying to locate somewhere indicated on an app, we abandoned that plan and ‘conferred’ on a new one. This is where the Gareth/Alison translator app would have been handy. I can’t fault his efforts to equip us with a range of technical aids but operating between four phones, an iPad, a Mac, a SatNav, a book of European maps, a ‘Budget Guide to Europe’ and the ACSI camping guide has challenged my non-techy linear brain. And a brain still foggy with virus wasn’t helping. Needless to say, our first night camped, finally, in a little aire in Cateau-Cambresis was not the most convivial.

This morning, Saturday, we resolved to be better prepared. And we were until we found ourselves stuck up a narrow cul de sac in the middle of Charlevilles-Mezieres, Gareth red in the face as he tried reversing all the way out again. Our souvenir of that little excursion could be a collection of traffic transgression tickets when we get home! 

Anyway, we eventually found, through good old Google (none of these fancy apps) a nice municipal camp site in the Ardennes town of Sedan. The sun came out and we took a nice little walk into the old town, had a few beers and a pizza before returning to watch the sunset from the van. This trip isn’t being particularly Headless (see previous blogs) so far, except in the ‘headless chicken’ meaning of the term, but it’s been a nice evening and tomorrow is another day.