Bienvenues and Au revoirs

While we’ve been away, Australia has burned, Northern Europe has drowned, plague is spreading around the globe and locusts have ravaged some of the African continent. Biblical! Politicians continue to play games as they vie for fame and glory (or infamy) and the human race either contemplates its navel or cries into its pint while so many species face extinction. That’s how it seems anyway. 

Brexit also happened after Boris won the election, Prince Andrew made a fool of himself, Harry and Meghan resigned from the monarchy, blah, blah, blah.... We have sort of tried to keep up with ‘The News’, the serious and the farcical, but in general we’d have preferred not to know.

At the time of writing, we are parked up on a blustery sea-front on the Normandy coast. We are eking out our resources before we disembark from what currently feels like a boat in a choppy sea and embark instead onto our slightly bigger, but probably equally blustered caravan for the ‘summer’ season. The larger space will be a nice change after sharing this small, Hymer-shaped space with each other and two hairy, mucky spaniels.

Sea-front promenade, Cucq on the Normandy coast

Cold, foamy beach

We are slowly making our way towards the Chunnel, booked for a Friday crossing. It’s ten days since we crossed from Spain into France, where we’ve been met with a lot of grey, wet and cold weather. A few days in the Dordogne afforded us an interesting walk around Sarlat-la-Canada, a beautiful old medieval town, but mostly closed for the season, and too cold for al fresco eating (dogs aren’t welcome inside French restaurants). An aire at Les Eyzies, another interesting and touristy town with grottos, was next to the very fast flowing river Vezere. Bess and Pwdin, always water curious, had to be kept closely tethered, or we’d have had to pick them up from the Atlantic (if that’s where it flows to). Full rivers and muddy conditions everywhere testified to the sort of weather the area has been having. 

Throughout the Dordogne there are lots of grottos and pretty little towns, so we enjoyed another night stop in Brantôme before a scenic drive to Sauvignac near Limoges to visit Lorraine and Larry, friends from El Berro who live in France. It was a lovely, well-lubricated stay, and our groggy goodbyes the next morning were full of promises to meet up again soon. They are in Calais themselves, now, on a mercy mission to the refugees encamped there. Lovely couple.

Brantôme

 Brantôme 

After a night camped up north of Poitiers in a tiny little aire at Chezelles (near Chatellerault), we found our way to a beautiful country house in the Loire - the home of a friend I’ve not seen for going on thirty years. Janet and Christophe hosted us warmly and together we pieced together old memories and put the world to rights. To reconnect after many years of lost contact is very wholesome. More goodbyes but with new memories to take away, we left another lovely couple and set off north with home on our minds. Sad news of a dear aunt’s passing also draws us home to grieve with family.

As we sit huddled in Hymer within sight of Dover’s white cliffs it’s on our minds that oceans have dropped from the sky onto our homeland. We are assured that our caravan hasn’t floated away but the prospect of a muddy site reminds us of the awful weather we had when we left in October. Has there been ANY let up? We have a bit of a wine stash and a couple of French cheeses to take home with us along with a few things for the children. I also stocked up on anti-bacterial handgel which we’ve been using consistently in case Intermarche or Lidl is harbouring coronovirus on its shopping trolleys and door handles. As for face masks, much as I dread our picking up whatever germs my grandchildren may have picked up lately, we can’t present ourselves to them wearing face masks. It’ll be interesting to see what precautions are in place when we go through the border checks on Friday. See you soon, Blighty!