Travel Diary 2

Travel Diary Pt 2

After a week on the road we are behind our itinerary already! Maybe I’ve been too ambitious with it. Maybe the day out waiting to get the van checked didn’t help. Certainly trying to take a direct route instead of down the autoroutes didn’t!

We left Leper in Belgium and I planned to go the direct route down to Amiens instead of the big loop the autoroute takes.  Well, worst decision I could have made! Every 3kms or so, there was another village with speeds dropping from 70kph down to 50 or 30kph. And the road! Narrow, cobblestoned through every village, cars parked on the side leaving about 300mm to sneak past when negotiating oncoming traffic.

Our van is 2M wide and 6.5M long, so it needs a bit of room … and I am still getting used to the extra width. However, so far I’ve only knocked two rear view mirrors on cars, which is good. No damage either. But Kerrie yells at me just as I hit them, not before! I explained to her it would be a good idea to let me know beforehand, not at the same time. That way I may be able to avoid them. It’s bloody near impossile to watch oncoming traffic, the centreline and the right hand wing mirror to see how close I am to the curbs and parked cars.

Even on the autoroutes, the lanes are narrow and we travel mainly in the truck lane and overtake when it’s clear. As one drives past, the truck’s speed buffets the air around it and knocks the van around a bit. To make matters worse, the van has sloppy steering and so I find I am constantly having to adjust by a miniscule amount in order to avoid a major accident!

I now know why there are millions of rest areas called Aires on the side of every road. Parking spots where trucks, vans and cars can pull over, drivers can have a break, go to the toilet, smoke or just strecthc there legs for a while. These places are usually clean, neat and tidy and very welcome. As after an hour or so of driving, one needs to relax ones nerves and get ready for the next stretch!

Simon didn’t help matters much on the direct route either. He kept trying to redirect us to the autoroute and in the end, I threatened to get rid of him and use Crystal instead. However, we figured she wouldn’t be any improvement so we turned him off and kept going.

A couple of hours and 30kms later, I gave up on this direct route and turned Simon back on and followed his instructions back to the autoroute and away we went. No more “direct” routes for me! We ploughed on and Simon was still insistent on going some weird ways. At one village, we had to turn right, s small road by local standards. Fortunately nothing coming and we risked going down it. Turn left in 150M says Simon. We did and found ourselves travelling parallel to the road we had been on. Except well and truelly in farmland! And on a what was basically a one way road. Fortunately nothing coming as I have no idea how we would have passed each other.

Another left hand turn to take us back towards the original road and this time it seemed like a driveway into a farm residence. Ploughed fields on one side and some crop with yellow flowers on the other. We wound our way through this, over a couple of rises, blokes with tractors watching us carefully and shaking their heads! Eventually, for absolutely no reason, Simon decided to go back to the original route and we were off again! A nice little interlude of country viewing. But … we began to seriously wonder about Simon. Maybe he had drunk too much of the red wine we had had the previous night.

The time by this stage was about 4.30pm amd we had been driving for about 6 hours and I was tired and had enough for one day. We were not quite half way to where the itinerary said we should be. But we found a village just off the main road with a cheap municpal campsite - E15.00 for the night. And wonderfull hot showers. Parked the van, on with the electricity and then off down to the village pub for a feed. The pub was on the corner of the village square and called Le Carousel. An ancient building with some modern additions in front. Painted in a reddish brown colour and lots of windows, It even had, hopefully, about 12 outdoor seating arrangements complete with umbrellas and chairs and tables. No one using them due to it being about 6C.

We wandered inside and it was about 16C inside, so we warmed up and ordered some omellettes from the young waitress who couldn’t speak English and smiled at my imperfect French. So with much pointing and “Ouis” with the occasional “Excuse-moi madam, mais pouissez-vous du vin rouge?” we got food and a pitcher of local red wine. Very nice too I might add.

Wandered back to the camp ground with me asking Kerrie to slow down as I didn’t think it was a race and I would have lost had it been as my knee is now swollen from walking and my ankle hurts like blazes due to there being no cartiledge between the bones. However, nothing compared to what some people have to put up with, so soldier on!! I had kind of figured this would happen and while prepared for it mentally, didn’t mean I had to like it!

The Camp site was about 400m out of the village and boasted about 30 sites and a couple of dongers. Hot showers and free wifi which we couldn’t connect to. So we had to make do with the Wifi router we had bought with links to Orange and only works in France. Apparently, there is no common Telco which provides Internet access in Europe. So each country requires a new Sim Card to work. Good for the Telcos, but not good for travellers!! This could add up to a bit over the long term.

In the morning I noticed once again no one was up and moving around until about 8.00am. The vans have all the blinds pulled down and no noise in them. In fact one never hears anything at all in the sites. People are so quiet. Then there is a bit of rush to the toilets and showers and they disappear inside their vans once again. Strange! Maybe it’s the cold. Maybe it because they are all older. Who knows.

Just as we finished packing up and ready to head back out onto the road with Simon, I noticed a caravan moving all by itself. It backed out of a site, straightened up and went forward about 5 feet and got all nicely lined up on the concrete. All by itself. No car attached and no people pushing or pulling it. Being a nosey individual, I wandered over to find a bloke with a remote control in his hand, pressing buttons and pointing the remote at the caravan.

This guy and his wife were from Germany. Some place called “Ouchberg” or whatever in the north of Germany near the Danish border and they were over 65 and he explained the system to me. There is a drive system under the van complete with motor and cogs for driving the wheels forward or backwards and turning any way one wants. Brilliant system for people who cannot push or pull or if the van gets stuck in mud or whatever. Smart piece of German technology and something I had never seen before.

Chatting with people is interesting. Everyone we have met has been really nice and helpful. Even when there have language difficulties. I find it always helps to say “Je suis desolet. Je ne parle pas bein le francais.” Before anything else. Roughly translated it means I’m sorry, I don’t speak French very well. But whatever it works a treat.

I’ve also noticed that accents vary dramatically. I asked a bloke for directions to Caen and he had no idea of where I wanted to go. I showed him on the map and what he said sounded like “Kah!” Pronounced way back in the throat and very gutteral. Nothing like I expected. My pronounciation which had been approved by my French teacher was very proper of course! Just to prove a point I have heard about 3 or 4 ways of saying that word Caen. And none of them sound like “Cain” or “Cayen” or whatever!!

However I think my accent is improving. Twice today I have tried just asking a question or two without the apology first and received a waffling on for ages in French as if I understood. Then when I have looked on totally bewildered, I have had to resort to the “Je suis desolet …” bit to try and stop them. That works! But no one had seemed to mind. I figured they wouldn’t have waffled on like that if my accent gave me away as being English or whatever. Is that an improvement or just another potential trap to fall into?  Nevermind, I’ll persevere!

The biggest issue is trying to keep up with how fast they talk. Words all run together and the beginning of one word becomes the ending of the one before. With me still thinking in individual words, it takes about 4 words from them for me to lose track and get totally lost. I’m still trying to work out what the third word was while they have finished with about 40!

All in all, I have found so far that if you try and speak some French, they like it and are quite willing to persevere with their limited English. So between us we get things sorted with a bit of fun and mutual laughter.