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!