France Part 7 - Week 7 (Back Home)

From our Sunday stopover we continued up the pleasingly toll free A75 (bar the Millau bridge section, which is an incredible feat of engineering and worth paying to cross) and it’s an amazing route; road surface is like glass, scenery stunning as you snake through into the Auvergne at around 1000m for many miles before the long descent toward Clement Ferrand. We could see the autumn colours starting to come through in the trees and mists in the rolling valleys.

From that point on the journey becomes a little more dull, with flat countryside that made Mrs H say she felt was was driving up the M18
and M62 toward Bridlington.

We’d decided to stay for 2 nights at Camping Robinson, a 15 minute walk into Bourges, as we’d not visited before and (a) to visit a vet, (b) to have many bars on the doorstep and (c) it was forecast to be 25 degrees and sunny. We were a little sceptical about the site as the address was pretty much translated as Industry Boulevard; however it was lovely, friendly and peaceful out of season. We got a nice sunny pitch, following the obligatory swap from the one allocated of course. Life would be incomplete without that.

The outskirts of Bourges are pretty dire to be honest, but the ancient centre is very nice. Streets of timbered houses and nice shops dominated by the Cathedral of St Etienne of Bourges, built between the late 12th and late 13th centuries, is one of the great masterpieces of Gothic art and is admired for its proportions and the unity of its design. The tympanum, sculptures and stained-glass windows are particularly striking. Apart from the beauty of the

architecture, it attests to the power of Christianity in medieval France. Culture bit done, we were happy that there are many bars dotted around to sit soaking all this culture up, we learned the bar staff are grumpy up north. Mrs H was very upset as the surly waitress who clearly didn’t like us threw the beer mats down followed by a slamming down on the table of our Pressions. Didn’t go back there again.

We needed to find a vet to get Daisy her paperwork for repatriation, I found one who spoke no English and had to phone a friend to find out what she needed to do. Didn’t bode well for getting pooch back home. Getting the appointment was interesting, after waiting outside a while behind a queue of mainly people with cats in small boxes I found the receptionist sat at an open window round the back. I waited behind a demented elderly French lady, who collected her pets tablets, paid in coins of very small denomination and, from my very scant French, had a 20 minute chat about was she was having for dinner that evening. We got there in the end, the vet was lovely, made a French fuss of Daisy and we later sailed through pet police at Eurotunnel terminal.

Leaving Bourges without a plan other than to get roughly halfway to Calais we used mainly single carriageway D & N roads through more flat countryside, the highlight being holding onto the steering wheel for grim death as the pretty constant convoy of lorries heading in the opposite direction battered

us in their vortexes, being repeatedly sucked off the road, as it were.

The first Aire we tried at Saint Andre De L'Eure was ideally placed between a skateboard park, factory and 2 main roads; so we parked up and gently debated where to go as time was ticking by. We ended up at the nearest place I could see on Park4night; Restaurant Les 3 Etangs at Jouy sur Eure, which turned out to be CL like at a bargain €6 for a pitch with electric. This was offset by 3 beers each at the restaurant costing us the most we’d paid at €46. More expensive than St Tropez, I think we got the special English rates.Friendly host though, and restaurant looked lovely, as it should subsidised by our bill. The best was yet to come later that night, northerly France was hit by a storm and the weather warning alerted us to incoming gales peaking at 110km/h. Mrs H forwent any sleeping, and I stirred at about 2:30 to the gales and we spent the next 3 hours being lifted up with the gusts. We were parked next to a lake and Mrs H was fearful of being tipped over; pretty unlikely to be fair but it was probably the worst we’d had in years of caravanning. As it were I think we were in line with the Westerly direction, and some shelter from the trees around the lake so it could have been worse if we’d been broadside. It all calmed down at just before 6, so we grabbed a few hours kip before waking to a calm, pleasant morning next to the lake as if nothing had happened. Nice bit of countryside nearby, with some clearly wealthy villages surrounding.

We then reluctantly trekked toward Calais, first stopping on the outskirts of Rouen to stock up on wine etc before arriving at the very quiet Tunnel terminal in time to get an earlier train. No issues with customs, pet passport or Covid documentation. It always feels like you’re rudely spat out of France like a bad taste onto the M20 on returning, not fancying cooking and knowing the pub near the site was closed we tragically sought out McDonalds. What a contrast, dining in Halford’s car park with a thumping bass line, welcome home.

I wanted to stay at Ashridge Farm, Ashwell (near Baldock), a journey of about 90 minutes which took us nearer 6 hours. We heard grim news of several hours of delays on the M25, and our evil bitch of a SatNav delighted in helping us avoid this by sending us scenically through Dagenham, Ilford, Chigwell and surrounding east London suburbs narrowly missing LEZ and Congestion

charge territory. Finally getting to Ashwell, a pretty, historic and rural village we were greeted with a Road Closed sign. Victor Meldrew would have had a word for this, as we were stuck with little space to turn. A friendly local took pity on us and guided us around the narrow back streets, where we met a car towing a chip van, several cars and finally out of nowhere; a fire engine. We’d driven many miles up to this point with no issues, and here in a small Hertfordshire village we’d caused a little mayhem. Later in the pub a pie the size of a house brick, a bucket full of chips and an allotment of vegetables made some amends.

Inevitably the next day, for our return journey home the M1 was closed so the A1 alternative we needed to use to drop into a Motorhome dealership in Newark was a tad busy as well, about par for the course. We arrived back home Saturday 23rd October after 51 days away, covering 2750 miles. A great trip, I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to do this ourselves what we’d seen others do, and think lucky buggers. Now onto planning our next trip.