Day Twelve - Uh-oh!!

When I finished the last piece I wrote with the words "That's All Folks!" I didn't realise how true those words would be.

Two or three hours after that was posted Tania got an urgent phone call. Unfortunately we were both asleep at the time. Just before midnight Tania woke up and found the messages. Her dad had been taken to hospital and was very poorly. We left the apartment in a very hasty and unseemly manner just thirty minutes later and drove straight to Calais and got a ferry back.

Erm - a ferry!

At the time of writing he has improved after treatment in hospital but the family have been warned to be aware that he could become seriously ill again very quickly.

Understandably, I hope, you will appreciate that there is little more I can add to this now, there are far more important things to think of right at the moment.

I will, however, leave you with a couple of little snippets which should have been included in previous moments in this blog if only I had been endowed with a memory that had any lasting power to it!

I mentioned some days ago that seeing F1 cars driving around Monaco had been ticked off my bucket list. That wasn't the only thing achieved on that list this trip. Whilst I was having a deep chat with Tania overlooking a river I saw a sudden flash of blue. "Did you just see that?" I asked Tania. She had - and told me that my beliefs were correct. So - at long, long last I have seen a kingfisher. Been waiting a long time for that one.

And in my tale about trying out different foods whilst in France I forgot one of the most relevant - and, in its own way, exciting. A tomato.

Now - you must know it couldn't be just any old plum or cherry tomato. Oh no. I've had both of them before. Many times.

I've had to rewrite this little bit because I have realised the cunning French sold Tania and I a dummy. We bought this tomato from a tray marked Zebra Vert. I wrote about it taking the mickey because it was neither green - vert - or resembled in any way a zebra. Fortunately, before I made myself look a complete plonker, I decided to find a photo of it on Google. And - guess what?? Search for Zebra Vert and you get photos of green striped tomatoes. Our one was yellow. And no stripes.

A big, ugly yellow tomato. Descriptive - huh??

So now all I can tell you is that we ate a very yellow tomato. A very big, very ugly, very yellow tomato. It tasted better than any tomato I have ever eaten before. Bloody luvverly, in fact. Try one if you get the chance - but I wouldn't go looking for them in Tesco if I was you. Try a French hypermarket. Look for the biggest, ugliest yellow tomato you can find because there is no way I am going to know what it was called now. It'll be worth it.

So - for all those who have stayed with me thus far this really is the end of this particular trip - and this particular blog. Thanks for sticking with me. And - watch this space from time to time.

Days Eight to Eleven

So sorry it's been a bit quiet of late. That's due to a mix of days on the road with not much to tell about them and a paucity of WiFi where we are staying. But - hey-ho! - I am back on line - at least until tonight. . .

Tomorrow morning we head off to near Lille to visit friends of Tania, staying overnight, then Thursday we will try to find a hotel reasonably close to Calais. Friday morning we are on the ferry and this little adventure will be more or less over. So . . . if possible you might have more words to read on Thursday, if not I'll wrap this little episode up on Friday/Saturday.

Back to last Saturday which can be best summarised as: Autoroute, lunch, more autoroute, a forty-five minute traffic jam through the hell hole that is Lyon at which point an executive decision was made. The autoroute up until the traffic jam had been a fraught affair, always feeling as though we were seconds away from witnessing an accident, and with no great assurance that we wouldn't be part of it.

In our holiday fuelled innocence we had failed to realise it was a weekend. And that seems to be the key to the French driving like nutters! I'd like to think I have a reasonable amount of experience driving and driving on the continent too but I was not at all comfortable with the standard of driving I was surrounded by.

Our executive decision was to leave the motorways to the French so that they could have their accidents in peace and we would revert back to out trusty sat-nav sending us by the country roads. Bliss . . .

A pretty Normandy poppyfield which caught Tania's eye

Meant we didn't make as much progress as hoped but also meant that we ended up spending the night in the town of Moulin. Never heard of it before, knew nothing about it but after walking around the place - and Tania making amends for having never eaten a croque-monsieur in all her trips to France! - we grew to really like the town. Sad people that we are it helped that our hotel was directly across from the railway station and so - strictly out of professional interest of course - we meandered across there and had a look at their trains. And one of us even sadly waved at an incoming train driver.

Next day, more back roads and a pretty good progress made to Rouen. By now I had decided that, following Tania's early lead, I would take an experimental approach to French food and drink. Highlights have undoubtedly been a cheese called Beaufort which, as its name suggests is pretty strong and most importantly a particular alcoholic beverage.

Those who know me well will acknowledge that I am far from the world's greatest drinker. Truth is most of it I simply don't care for the taste. Can't stand beer, can sip at the odd vodka, have been know to drink wine and champagne - have not been known to be pissed for many decades.

Normandy house

But you know when you're in a French bar or restaurant and you see some native with a small drink into which he pours some water and it turns instantly milky? I have always known what it is, pastis. Known it has an aniseed taste. So curiosity got the better of me. I bought a small bottle and gave it a try. And now I have my drink of choice. When Tania gets home from work and likes to have a glass of wine or a small beer I no longer have to have the same, owing mainly to a sad lack of imagination. Oh no. I can quietly say, "I'll have a small glass of Ricard please!" In one fell swoop I now feel as though I can look all drinkers plus all French men squarely, if a bit wobbly, in the eye!

Monday and Tuesday we have been just driving around the little back lanes east of Rouen. In my madcap motorcycling days in France Normandy was the place I rushed through as I headed down south somewhere or other in search of sun, warmth and some empty roads. Never bothered to look at what was here.

A bike,  the sun, open roads - what else is there?

We have found some proper peachy little villages and towns in our travels. Ry and Lyon de Forêt are two that are especially worthy of mention - Ry is the town that a lot of the book Madame Bovary was based upon.

Whilst these are absolutely beautiful places - and there are many others - I find myself wondering why Brits would want to live here. It has long been known that I hanker after a life in France - in reality unlikely to move beyond the impossible dream stage for a variety of reasons. But if I were to move to France I would see little point in living in a part that has the same climate as England. For me anyway, one of the reasons for making such a move would be for more sunshine.


No matter how pretty its villages might be Normandy will never lure me until it moves a couple of hundred miles further south.

The market town of Gaillon

Knowing that just five days ago we had the - err - excitement of watching Formula One cars dashing through the streets of Monaco we needed something to get the excitement levels up again today. So we went to a local market at a town called Gaillon. I just cannot steer clear of a rock-and-roll lifestyle.





And one final thought from this sleepy little commune called Connelles. Since staying in this apartment Tania and I have been very much like a married couple. We sleep in separate beds! Truth is two singles is all we have. During this trip when we've stayed in hotels both of us have had appallingly restless nights and some very strange dreams. But in these two single beds we have both been more or less comatose for eight hours. Flat out. Zonked. If it wasn't for the fact that they are singles we'd be sorely tempted to squeeze them into the back of the LandRover and bring them back with us.

Well, as the duck or the rabbit used to say (I can't remember which . . .) That's All Folks!

Days Six and Seven

So – Thursday morning and Monaco. I said that my dream had been to hear the noise of Formula One cars bouncing off the buildings of the Principality, a dream slightly lost by the changes to the rules.

When we got off the train in Monaco – an early morning train that was rammed from Nice onwards – the Monégasques had gone to a lot of trouble to get people to the part of town they needed to be in. Signs on ever corner and helpful, friendly police everywhere. Sadly we discovered out tickets let us into only one small part of the circuit and absolutely nowhere else. Fortunately for us our little bit was pretty cool.

On the walk down from the station to our corner we were walking along a typical city shopping street only different from any other city by the frequent PortaLoos on the pavement that they were thoughtful to provide. As Tania was test driving one of these PortaLoos all hell broke loose! The noise was unbelievable! No – not Tania. Some racing cars going flat out around the streets. Of course, we couldn’t see the bloody things at all from where we were – but we sure knew they were out there somewhere.

We got to our stand – for the aficionados, between La Rascasse and Virage Anthony Noghes and opposite the pit road entrance – and were bombarded with noise. And I mean NOISE!!! Ear-aching noise.

The cars were Formula Renault 3.5 – a feeder class for potential Grand Prix drivers and man those things are loud, loud, LOUD. At every single gear change the unused petrol in the exhaust pipes explodes like a very loud gunshot. As Noghes is a slow corner onto the start/finish straight each car was making at least three gear changes in quick succession – bang, bang, bang. They hurt the eardrums, they did, as the exhausts were pointing straight at us.

We could have done with some ear plugs and were just slightly miffed that we had left dozens of them at home.

As is the way of the world a man came round selling ear plugs just as the new, quieter F1 cars came out but we bought some anyway and wedged them in the most appropriate orifices we could think of! I had to tell Tania she'd got it wrong . . .

So here’s the deal with the Formula One cars this year. Yes – they are definitely quieter than last years’ and are most definitely not as loud as the Formula Renault jobbies. But – they are not quiet. Not at all. You wouldn’t want one of them driving down your road at two in the morning. And they do not sound like any Dyson I ever heard or used - like I know how to use a Dyson.

A Caterham chases a Ferrari towards the start line

As we were watching practice all we had were the cars coming out randomly, doing a few laps and then going back in. Long before the one-and-a-half hour session was over I have to admit I had the most unexpected and strange feeling. 

I was bored. And although she never said as much because she wanted me to enjoy “my day” I could see that Tania's eyes were glazing over so I decided we would leave at lunchtime. In my teens I could bore for England talking about Formula One, knew what rose-joints were, knew the length and width of every car and even knew where the drivers bought their string-sided y-fronts! But I guess now the feeling has gone.

But, during the time we were there I got to hear the cars on the track, so I can knock that off my bucket list. And I saw all the current drivers out on the track and walking to and from the pits just across from us. Lewis Hamilton was the cool customer who turned up in his civvy clothes seconds after practice had actually started when all the other drivers had arrived some minutes earlier and already wearing their firesuits. It was all I could do to stop myself waving like a girl and shouting out, "Cooee! Lewis! Cooee!!"

Practice has just started and look who's arrived!

Of the cars, the Williams’ look great in their white Martini livery and – surprisingly – the Ferraris look a lot brighter on telly or in photos than they do in reality – in fact they somehow manage to look quite dull.

Kimi Raikkonen enters those pit thingies!

On our way back we called into Cannes and, by chance, found ourselves eating lunch in a restaurant opposite where the Cannes Film Festival takes place. Never saw anyone of any importance, just hordes of people lined up waiting to cheer at whoever. Oh – and a Japanese couple doing a piece to camera just beside us whilst we were eating.

But there were loads of posers and, it has to be said, dozens of very pretty girls with the longest legs I ever saw.

Friday we went out with no clear idea what to do with ourselves. Don’t the days with no plans always work out to be the best??

Started at a factory that makes sweets, jams and chocolates out of flowers. Far, far more interesting than it sounds and whilst there we were fortunate enough to bump into an English couple who suggested we visited a place called St-Paul de Vence. Neither of us had ever heard of it but thought it might be worth a punt after the description we were given.

St-Paul de Vence

I’m telling you, if you haven’t been there and ever find yourself in this part of France be sure to include this on your travels. It is a walled medieval town with tiny narrow lanes weaving through it. Most of the shops are either selling tourist guff or art – but that’s pretty much what you’d expect, isn't it, and the art shops were especially good. Who should turn up just as we arrived at the village?? Floella Benjamin, that’s who! If you have found yourself wondering whatever happened to her – something I pondered on an almost daily basis – here was the answer. She turns up in foreign tourist areas to surprise visiting Brits and watch their faces as they try to hide their “Oh! She’s still alive!” thoughts.

Lunch - French style

 Found ourselves a cool little restaurant for lunch – great food, crap service – which gave Tania a chance to hit the vino again! I think she’s got a habit – but we’ll keep that to ourselves, ok?

Tania and a rosé

Anyway, so as to give her a chance to walk it off we made tracks for Mougins, a little village – again on a hilltop – that we’ve both been to before and in Tania’s case, many times. Another artists enclave – we just can’t help ourselves – and a beautiful little village where I’d move to in a heartbeat – if only I could stump up the one point five million needed to buy the cheapest pad there. Not even train drivers can afford that – hard to imagine as that is.

‘Twas a really good day for us – and now, as I write this twaddle we are relaxing as tomorrow, Saturday, we start a 650 mile dash to Rouen, hoping to arrive on Sunday afternoon. 

Days Two to Five

It has occurred to Tania and me over the past few days that this holiday is not what we envisaged it was going to be. It is far removed from what we’d originally planned and as we altered it piecemeal fashion neither of us thought to look at the bigger, overall picture.

Let me explain.

We first arranged this over a year ago. Tania booked for us to stay in an apartment at a resort between Grasse and Cannes for ten days. With that booked I applied for tickets to see the Formula One practice on the Thursday so that I could achieve my dream of hearing the noise of the cars bouncing off the buildings, having walked the circuit when we were there just over eighteen months ago.

A couple of days to drive here, ten days lazing about on the Riviera and three days to drive back sounded ideal to us.

First and biggest setback was when the property company said the apartments were all closed for refurbishment until July. We weren’t going to have to pay for staying there – a long story – so now were faced with paying to stay in hotels. We settled on three days in Grasse with a longer steady drive down and an even longer drive back, but still with the Monaco GP practice included.

Setback two was that there was no way I could know when I booked my tickets that they were going to make the Formula One cars the quietest ever from this year. One character described the noise as like a Dyson! Bum!

Vézelay

So, days two, three and four have all been a blur of driving, eating, sleeping and being tourists. Using a book called Back Roads France as a rough guide we have visited places such as Autun, an ancient town founded in the days that we now call BC which had Roman ruins a-plenty, Vézelay which is perched atop a hill, a tourist trail admittedly but a place where we had some of that divine French food we love so much, and, trust me, is worth a visit.

Nom, nom, nom!

The past couple of nights have been spent in the town of Die. We have worn out the gags such as today we are going to die . . . in reality it is pronounced dee. I have been aware of it for years and have always wanted to visit without knowing why. As it was recommended in our trusty guide we decided to make this the place for the longer stay.

Our guide tells us, “With its brightly shuttered houses, squares bordered by cafés and courtyards with villagers playing petanque Die reminds visitors of Provence. The steep cobblestoned streets are lined with bars and stores full of the aromas of local produce . . . “

I’ll share a little secret with you now. Not a word of that is true – or if it is we never saw any of it. When I read that quote to Tania she just laughed.

Choosing to stay there was a mistake, no doubt about it.

It is a rundown dump of a place with more than its share of misfits and ne’er-do-wells as inhabitants.

Now, I don’t want this to sound all negative. We’ve had some good moments, odd little things that are as pleasant as they are unexpected such as turning up at a restaurant unwittingly fifteen minutes after they closed. They took pity on us, I guess, and still managed to rustle up a lunch for us.

And getting to the butterfly farm, seeing all we wanted to see and then heading to the exit just as a coach load of French pensioners turned up was exquisite timing.

I guess, too, we will never forget the hotel proprietor who fell so in love with Tania when he learned she drove the English equivalent of their TGV trains and that she spoke pretty good French.

One of the thoughts I have had about the trip so far is that this is the first time I’ve driven so far in an automatic. Got to say it does make life easier but I really am concerned that I will arrive back in England with nicely toned muscles in my right leg and an atrophied left one!

Today, day five, was the day when Tania, who hates mountain roads every bit as much as she hates flying asked, in all seriousness, ”Why do they always build the roads around the edge of mountains?” Bless.

We had lunch in a spa town called Digne-Les-Bains, a place I’ve been to many times and quite like. Tania came over all girly after we’d eaten and had that urge that women so often get – the need to do some clothes shopping. I learned a long time ago that we men have no power to stop such a thing – so I play the game another way and actively encourage it. The dividends always seem to be rewarded eventually, so I suggested she look at a little blouse which she bought, and when she couldn’t decide which of two colours the dress she tried on came in I told her I thought she should have both. Cool, huh?

As we were nearing Grasse there was a sign for a Citroen museum which I had never noticed before. Knowing from previous chats that Tania has no love for the cars I still boldly said we should stop and look. Well, she was hardly in a position to say no, was she?

Genuinely the oldest DS in captivity

Tania dutifully followed me around as I bored her shitless explaining the difference between a DS and a CX. Can’t say she was hanging on my every word but as time went by she started looking at them with just a tad of liking, if not affection.

How French - and how cool is this?? The Citroen H

Tania has also long been aware of my love for the Citroen H vans, memories of my first trip to France in the early sixties include seeing police versions of these scurrying around Paris. So when we went to the little shop inside the museum and saw models of the vans and a tee-shirt with one on the front she really had no choice but to encourage me to buy them. In fact she bought the model herself.

The tee-shirt is really cool. All I need to show you it is to find some wanker to model it . . .

Tomorrow is Monaco and the whispering Grand Prix cars. I’ll let you know what I hear.

Day One

Firstly let me start with a simple observation. With previous blogs I have written upon my return to the UK I have asked various recipients of the blog if they read my little tales. More than half, shuffled their feet, looked around them and then mumbled something along the lines of, “Err – I’ve not really had time”. This I understand. My writing might well not be to everybody’s taste and I have to accept my stories really might not be that interesting.

Something else I have learned along the way, however, is that for me the blogs are a far better reminder of the holidays I have had than any photos can ever be, with one or two rare exceptions.

So, from this blog forward these will be written for me. I will use them to relive some of the experiences I have had, some of those holiday moments. If you have read thus far then maybe, just maybe, you are interested enough to see where these go. If so then I hope you enjoy.

Here goes, then, for the first day.

Shall I let you in on our little secret? Keep it to yourselves, though, ok? When we cross the channel we invariably get our car onboard and then immediately make our way to Le Brasserie, the posh restaurant on P&O ferries. There we quietly enjoy a somewhat expensive cooked breakfast in calm, quiet surroundings whilst the majority of passengers either line up for a self-service brekkie or to raid the duty free shop.

This trip when we got to the restaurant there was a queue waiting to be seated. A rather large queue. After about fifteen minutes we were shown to a table in what was by now a very crowded and noisy restaurant. Now here a pattern developed because after another fifteen minutes somebody came to take out order. And fifteen minutes later some toast was deposited on our table. Toast that seemed to have seen a grill some fifteen minutes earlier at best.

And after yet another fifteen our breakfast arrived. And if you do the maths you will realise we didn’t have too long to sit and – I’m tempted to say enjoy it but that would be like saying you enjoy getting sand in your eyes – so let’s settle for eating the lukewarm fare. In fact we had – ooh! let me guess – about – err – fifteen minutes!

Remember – please don’t let on about our wonderful restaurant or everybody will want to do it.

Possibly.

A French market - all I need to keep me happy. This one in Arras

Acting upon Tania’s suggestion our first port of call in France was Arras. Never been there before but it really is a beautiful little town with two adjacent squares. There were markets in both and I am a sucker for French markets, especially the food ones. Always make me wish I could buy a few ingredients and then go off to cook them. Of course, I would need somewhere to do that – and I seem to be short of places to live in France. And I would need to know how to cook – currently a work in progress.

Young Tania said I really ought to go up the belfry of the town church so I did. One lift and forty-three steps to get to the top.

The dreaded belfry!

Now, here is a thing for you. When I got to the top and walked out on to the parapet I came over all queer. Felt very uneasy. To borrow someone else’s phrase, if I wasn't disconcerted I wasn’t very concerted either!

It’s happened to me before but with no logic to it. Some days I can stand at great heights and without any fear or worry admire the views. Other days – and this was one of them – being up there scares the crap out of me.

I’ll give you a really odd one. The day I took Tania up the Shard! At the first observation level, which is higher than anything else in London, I was really enjoying looking as far into the distance as I could – marvelling that I could clearly see Croydon just halfway towards the horizon – and then equally happily looking directly down on the trains coming in and out of London as though it was the world’s largest train set.

And then we went to the upper observation deck just a couple of stories higher – and, man, did I not like that! For a start it was open to the air in places so felt outside. If you haven’t already been when you do go you will understand the ridiculousness of that statement. And for another, there were places where there were no handrails by the window, so you could stand and lean on the glass. Yea – like I was going to do that!

Now my brain told me there was no way they would build this thing with windows that could fall hundreds of feet to the ground below and equally no way they would let the public in a place where there was any grave risk to them. Well – one half of my brain told me that. The other half was screaming at me – “You really don’t want to be up here, buddy!” And do you know what?? That half knew what it was talking about . . .

There is fear in those eyes - believe me

And so it was with the belfry, or beffroi as the French have it. Persuaded Tania to come back down to the ground as soon as dignity would let me.

Arras redeemed itself by having a very typical - and absolutely delightful - patisserie. So good that Tania couldn't resist taking a photo of their shop window. And neither of us could resist just the one pastry each. 

Eeny meeny miney mo - catch a Clarkson by its toe!! Err - that one for me - or - shall I have that one - or  . . .

One final thought about the lovely town of Arras. Anything to do with it is know as Artois - I guess as in Stella Artois. Who knew?? Certainly not me.

(Since writing that I have checked and can confirm Stella Artois is a Belgian beer and nothing to do with Arras at all. However, in the 1700s a man called Sebastien Artois became the master brewer at the brewery in Leuven, Belgium and it soon took his name. If I could I would love to check his family history - any bets they came from Arras at some point??)

From there we went to Thiepval so that Tania could see a war memorial she had heard about from a friend. It’s probably quite well known but have to confess I’d never heard of it. Designed by the man who also designed the Cenotaph in Whitehall the photos of this memorial do not do it justice, especially its size.

Thiepval memorial

The lower part of the memorial – the white panels – have ever square inch covered with names of British and South African soldiers who were killed on battlefields close by in World War One – I refuse to call it The Great War, a misnomer if ever there was one. But these aren’t all the soldiers slaughtered on or around those trenches, they are just the ones who were denied the opportunity of a proper burial, the ones whose whereabouts is unknown.

That is over seventy thousand men whose family never got a body to bury, never knew where their father, brother, son ended their short lives. A Wembley Stadium full.

Inconnu - unkown

Seems such a sad waste.

We stayed that night at a hotel picked at random as we passed in a town called Sezanne. For just over thirty pounds we got ourselves a hotel room which had a double bed, satellite television and an en suite that had everything we needed – except water, as poor Tania found out after she’d had a little tinkle and tried to flush away the evidence! She tried the shower and the wash basin to see if maybe it was just the toilet that was lacking the essential fluid. Not so. There was no water at all.

Poor young lad who booked us in told us it was his first day at work. As if booking foreigners in wasn’t a tough enough deal for him he now had to deal with our crisis.

It got sorted in the end and we consoled ourselves with the thought that we had got the hotel crises out of the way for this trip.

Well – we had until the next night when we found ourselves in a hotel in Autun which had an en suite with everything we wanted.

Except toilet paper!

Oh! And we got locked out when the proprietor went to bed. Fortunately kind man in hotel next door showed us how to get in . . .

It can only get better – no?