28th April
Woke up in France. Rob had told us that on French camp sites a chap comes around in the morning selling coffee and croissants. He wasn’t wrong, at 08.00 we were awakened by the blaring of a car horn, I shot out of bed struggled into my clothes and ran out of the tent just in time to see him disappear, never to be seen again. Never mind, I do like a nice cup of tea. We decided to pack up sharpish and set off for the champagne region, about 150 miles away. However, once we had repacked the car into a more orderly fashion time was starting to be against us. We got on the road and after about 70 miles we had our first culture shock, we filled up with diesel at a motorway services and bought a pre packed sandwich. It contained the most beautiful dry cured ham, pre packed I tell you! Off we went and later stopped off for another “Ace break”, I fancied a coffee but the only take away was from a machine, I don’t really do machine coffee but out popped culture shock number two, a most delightful cappuccino.
As time was running out we decided to head for ……??…. A campsite on the shores of lake …??.. Much recommended in our camping guide to France. Unfortunately the book is circa 1997 and the campsite, we were to find out, is now a centre parcs. The chap on the gate directed us to another lake not 3 miles away and from there I am writing this. The day did however have another sting in it’s tail. Tis a public holiday, all the small shops are shut and we had no provisions. We popped into ……… to look for a supermarket. Seeing a sign for another campsite we drove up the road to check it out. It was closed, however in the rear view mirror loomed the local police, checking us out. We sign languaged our predicament re lack of shops and finished up having an escort to the nearest shopping centre. Vive le France. Highlight of the day though was when we got to a toll booth shortly after setting off. We didn’t have a clue what to do as there was no place to put our money, unlike the first one we encountered. We decided to reverse out and ponder on the situation. As I was reversing Yeti spotted a chap at the next booth pull a ticket out of the machine and then he was off, so we pulled back in and as the ticket was at her side yeti got out and got the ticket, the barrier shot up and panicked her, she leaped into the car and cracked her head shouting go go go!!
Much I’m sorry to say, to my amusement.