Been home a week, what shall we do?

Just six days after returning home we were away for the weekend on a rally with the Bucks Caravan Centre.  The rally was called "A Taste of Italy" so we thought we'd go along as we hadn't managed to fit Italy into our itinerary during our year away.

It was great to meet up with old friends and we were blown away by the welcome we received, including this amazing cake made by the lovely Sue Cooper.

Back home

Following our lovely final two days in France with Tony & Claire we made the short trip to the Eurotunnel terminal for our crossing.

We didn't head straight home.  I hadn't seen my mum for a few months and Julie hadn't seen her for 15 months so we spent our first 4 nights back in the UK in a small campsite in Abbess Roding (near Chipping Ongar).  It was the nearest decent-looking site we could find to Hornchurch where my mum is in a care home.  It was good to see her again - she's 93 now but is still physically fit and has an amazing appetite as we found when we took her to a local pub for lunch (3 courses and a vodka & tonic!).

The site was very pleasant but it was a bit weird being that close to home, especially for Julie who hadn't seen 60 Shelley Road for nearly 13 months, and was dying to get home.

Our journey home on Saturday 11th was slow (I have to say we really haven't missed the M25 while we've been away!) but uneventful and after 389 days on the road we finally pulled into our drive early in the afternoon.

We've had mixed feelings about coming home.  It's been great to catch up with friends and family again but we are already missing the simplicity of the lifestyle we have had for the last year.  We're determined that we're not just going to "settle back in" as if we'd never been away.  We have some exciting plans for the next stage of our adventure and we will be spending the winter getting our house ready to put on the market next summer.

Although our travels have come to an end for the time being, it's not the end of "Julie and Peter's Undoing" and we are going to keep on blogging (although we may not post quite as regularly as when we were travelling).

La derniere etape

Having spent a week being very impressed by what we saw at the Somme, we began to feel a little emotional.  The year + was nearly at an end, we had achieved what we set out to do......undoing.......

We have both learnt so much.  Relationships with people are the most treasured memories.  Without the people we have met on the way our 'trip' wouldn't have been as much fun, or as interesting.

Without the support of our family and friends at home it wouldn't have happened.  There have been times when we've felt homesick and thought maybe a year was too long, but in those times we have gained strength from one another and from our faith in God which has also led us to a new understanding of living.  Some of the 'chats' we've had with our children have really pulled at our heart strings....wishing we weren't so far away....but that just confirms the love there is between us.


We've spent over a year living out of a 'box' which measures 4.7 metres by 2 metres, only able to carry with us what would fit in the the car and caravan - moving from place to place with everything in tow (literally!) -  only being able to store provisions for 2 days at a time, so really relying on local shops, stalls, etc for replenishing foodstuffs -being lucky enough to have good weather nearly every day so the few clothes we had with us could be washed and dried quickly and no ironing for the whole year (might continue with that one!)  ...........

                       ...................... and we've loved it!!

We've adapted so well to this kind of environment....living simply.....that we now have a mission to transfer it to the house.  Watch this space!


We couldn't have thought of a better way to spend our last 2 nights in France than to stay at one of our favourite "sites" - Chez Tony and Claire in a village in Nord Pas De Calais

We got to their cottage first and set up the van in their front garden. 

Tony and Claire arrived late afternoon and we shared a meal recollecting their journey down to Porto to visit us, and the wonderful time we had spent together.  (Just to remind you, this is the couple who refused to be prevented from coming to see us in Porto just because a volcano in Iceland had decided to let off steam - and drove for two days there and two days back just to spend three days with us)

Unfortunately the weather on our last 2 days in France wasn't as good as it had been in Portugal, but it didn't stop us from doing anything (apart from visiting the beach!)  We even managed breakfast outside on the first day.

Baie de Somme

The final stop at a French camp site on our journey home was at a very friendly, very French site on the outskirts of Saint Valery-sur-Somme. Why very French? Well we were now in low season and the only travellers we have come across in the low season were Dutch, German and English, with maybe a few Danes thrown in for good measure. This site was 98% French and it was full! Yet another new experience! It was as if we had been thrown back into the middle of July, the weather was just as good too.

This was another new area of France for us and it has been added to the list of places we will definitely come back to.

Saint Valery is on the edge of the Baie de Somme, an absolutely enormous bay which is now a nature reserve as it attracts hundreds of species of migrating birds as well as having its own colony of seals. We were very fortunate that the weather was calm and sunny while we were there as we’re sure it’s not quite so attractive when there’s a Force 9 gale blowing in from the Atlantic! The colours and the scenery changed depending on the tide and the time of day. It was the sort of vista that you could never get tired of viewing. At high tide many boats and guided canoes were out to see all the wild life and just have a good time. At low tide you could take a guided walking tour in borrowed wellies to see the wildlife and plants which are very special and the harvesting of them adds to the economy of this area. (One of our favourites is samphire - delicious served with fish.))

Benji enjoyed the open spaces but the beach, being on an estuary, was a bit muddy so much poodle cleaning was required!

The town of Saint Valery still has most of the old city wall intact and a fascinating old church with a very impressive set of gargoyles!

We also spent some time exploring the resorts on either side of the bay

We saw these horses racing on a beach on the Eastern side of the bay near Le Crotoy.

These pictures are from Cayeaux-sur-mer, a resort to the West, with its immaculate rows of beach huts fronting an enormous pebble beach.

The most surprising place we visited a bit further West. At Le Treport you have wide expanses of beach with flat land behind on one side but on the other side you have cliffs that rival Dover! These two photos were taken from the same place. Le Treport also has beautiful old seaside architecture and is brimming with restaurants. We only drove around here as we had already eaten and it was very busy in a friendly holiday sort of way, but it’s somewhere we will make a point of returning to in the future.

Honfleur

On our route further north we hit the coast at Honfleur, and stayed on a site in view of the famous Pont de Normandie which spans the Seine estuary.


The town of Honfleur is very attractive, the port area particularly so with dozens of restaurants to choose from on the quayside, most offering a range of seafood but with Moules Frites (in many different varieties) the most common.

We have learnt that, in France, if you want a good table and haven’t booked in advance you need to arrive very early i.e. 12 or even just before (unlike Spain where if you arrive before 2 they think you’ve come for a late breakfast!). Most restaurants don’t start service until midday but they are usually happy for you to sit at your chosen table until then, so we sat at a quayside table for two and watched the world go by until they were ready to take our order. We’re becoming Moules connoisseurs now and we’ve come to the conclusion that of all the different sauces on offer, “a la crème”, done well, is the best.

The Sarthe Region

France is a huge country as we all know, so choosing a route to take returning north was determined by cheap campsites avoiding the Paris route!


We have found the ACSI the most beneficial financially, and so used their guide book to pick out sites on our route home. (ACSI is a scheme that enables you to stay on member sites at a discounted rate outside of high season).

We have never stayed anywhere in between the Loire and Nord Pas de Calais before so we were on new territory. A site west of Le Mans, called Les Tournesols (The Sunflowers to you and me), in a small town called Sille de Guillaume was accepting ACSI from 17/08 so we thought that’s the place to pull in. It is a Dutch owned site which has every amenity you could wish for, if not on site, very close by. The welcome at the site was terrific—we were invited in for coffee where we were given so much information we couldn’t take it all in at once, but it didn’t matter as the owner was more than happy to repeat it as and when.

We were lucky enough to have arrived just before the end of an exciting month in Le Mans. The owner encouraged us to make the ½ hour drive into Le Mans during an evening to see the spectacle of pictures and music projected onto walls in the ancient city. Ancient City? We had only heard of the road race around Le Mans, we didn’t even know it had an ancient city. Wow, were we in for a treat. If you have never ever stopped at Le Mans before, make it a priority next time you are in the area. It’s beautiful and so unexpected. Even without the summer programme of events the ‘Old Town’ is well worth a visit. We will make it one of our priorities next time we come to France. Unfortunately we only went at night so we didn’t get any photos to show why we are so excited by it, but then that might spoil it for any one else.

In fact we didn’t realise just how much there is to see and do in the ‘Sarthe’ region of France. Much of it is likened to Britain, and many of the little villages are very much like villages you just come across at home. It is very quaint and beautiful and has a lot of history connected to Britain.

We spent a wonderful 2 nights at this site, but were out much of the time taking in all the surroundings. Below are a few photos of us using our newly-acquired paella pan for the first time and some pictures of the images that were projected onto the various walls in the old city of Le Mans. I know we have often said that our photos don’t do justice but it’s definitely true in this case as they were all moving images combined with either music or speech. Can’t say we understood everything that was going on but it was definitely worth seeing.

                                                                                   

This is Julie cooking the Paella

                             

...and here is the finished dish!

and this is a picture of Peter at the top of a tower in the middle of an oak wood giving an amazing view over the vast countryside, and can you believe it we were only 330kms as the crow flies from London!

The Loire

As we travelled north through France we chose to stay on a site in the Loire valley near Saumur. We had stayed in Saumur for five days 6 years ago and had been impressed with the area.

The site itself was a little disappointing on first impressions – a rather scruffy field and they were obviously struggling for custom as there were no more than three caravans on site at any time and there was room for many more. (Apparently the recession has hit the French camping industry hard this year.)

But the owners were more than accommodating. On the positive side it did mean that we had as much space as we wanted and we didn’t need to put Benji on a lead. The site also had a pool which we made use of a couple of times and offered an on-demand restaurant service whereby the owner’s wife, given at least a few hours notice, could prepare a wonderful three-course meal.

The nearest town was Montreuil-Bellay, yet another picturesque French village (they do seem to have so many!)

We particularly chose this site to make a return visit to an amazing restaurant we had visited the last time we were in this region. The “Caves de Marson” is a restaurant inside a Troglodyte cave which serves a set menu of ‘fouees’, which are a cross between a bread roll and pitta bread, cooked in a massive wood oven in the cave, served with rillette (which is similar to potted meat), goats cheese, haricot blanc, Normandy butter and salad. In six years the price had gone up by 3 Euros, it was just a little more commercialised, but apart from that the food and the experience were just as good as we had remembered. Even the Maitre d’ was the same lady we saw when we were there 6 years before.

We were only a short drive from Saumur, which we visited on the Saturday morning. It was even more attractive than we remembered it and this time the scaffolding had gone from around the Chateau, so we made the climb up to the gardens and enjoyed a cocktail looking at the view of the Loire, which was very shallow as they have had precious little rain in the Loire district this summer.

They say ‘never go back’ which is why we had chosen to stay on a different site, on the whole we do try to visit different places most of the time. The week near Saumur not only enabled us to enjoy ‘Caves de Marson’ again, it also revealed to each of us one of the forces which pushed us to take this year out. To learn to live in the moment and enjoy each and every blessing which comes your way. OK, the site wasn’t quite what we had expected or wanted, but it met our every need and more. We had an excellent reflective week there which marked us in ways we were not prepared for.

Chilled or what!

We are now on the north coast of France.  To get up here we decided to cut up through the Vallee de la Sarthe.  We've not actually been to that region of France before and we can reccomend it as a wonderful holiday destination, but more about our sight-seeing later.  This is a blog about a little incident which happened while leaving the town we were staying in there.

We had decided on our morning of departure that instead of Peter nipping out in the car to fill up with fuel before we hooked the caravan up, we could do it on our way out of town.  There was a 'Super  U' supermarket we had walked to the day before so we knew there weren't any height restrictions getting into the car park.

We left a little later than originally planned as we'd stopped to talk at length to the owner of the site and a few other campers, but as our motto is 'there's no rush' it didn't bother us.

We pulled into the supermarket car park and round to the petrol pumps and that's where all the fun began.

There was a rather 'sharp right turn' as Emily-the sat nav would have described it, which also had a high kerb and a narrow passage into the parking area to re-fuel.

As Peter pulled into the re-fueling area there was a loud grating noise coming from the back of the van.

Now, because we had left later than envisioned, it was close to lunch time and the supermarket car park was becoming quite busy and  everybody had to exit past the entrance to the fuel pumps.
 
I got out of the car to see what the noise was to find the motormover (a mechanical device to move the caravan, which is permanently housed in front of both the caravan wheels) perched on the edge of the high kerb.

We were already taking up the space for two vehicles, but cars could squeeze past behind us to get out.

There was only one way to get off the kerb and that was to back off.  So while I held up the traffic Peter backed the car and van very slowly off the kerb.

We still had to get fuel so we tried again to pull over a little more to the left to clear the kerb.  Success!  But this time we were so close to the pumps that we couldn't take the caravan any further forward after we had filled with fuel or we would have lost the offside of the caravan.

In the meantime we had become a bit of a spectacle with some offers of help and a few raised arms and shrugged shoulders.

The only thing for it was to hold all the traffic up again and back completely out of the service station.  I went to pay at the kiosk and explain what we were going to do, by this time people were saying hello to Benji popping his head out of the car window and discussing our best way forward.

Peter held his nerve and while I stopped the traffic backed expertly out of the narrow situation we had got ourselves into.

As I got into the car we both laughed and said "well that was another first", maybe not to be repeated.  But what struck us the most was how calmly we had both dealt with it.  Neither of us fussed or flustered, neither of us cared how long it took us to sort the situation out and no-one got upset.  We can imagine we were possibly the talk of a few lunch-time conversations, and we probably haven't done a lot for Anglo-French relationships, especially if anyone was in a hurry, but we've learnt the French take most incidents like this with an air of que sera sera.   Fantastic!

Bucks Caravan Club members - you would have been proud of Pete!

The adventures of Benji the wonder poodle!

If you've been following our blog you will know that we have been accompanied on our trip by our faitfhul companion Benji.  In fact you can't have missed him as our sons Dave and Paul often joke about how many of our photos and videos feature him in some way.

Some of you will know the story of how we acquired Benji--an ex Hearing Dog who made it most of the way through his training but didn't graduate at the end so needed to find an alternative career. 

We've now been his owners for just over 5 years. When we first got him he was ever so well behaved and didn't act like a dog at all.  This particular cross-breed (poodle/terrier) is renowned for its intelligence which is why they are often used as assistance dogs.   During his training he had used his intelligence to learn to react to different sounds.  When we first had him, if the phone rang, he would circle round the room and come and sit down next to us to let us know.

He also had an "off" switch at meal times where as soon as food was served at the table he would go and lie still in his basket until we had finished.

Hearing Dogs are trained by rewarding good behaviour and ignoring bad behaviour and although they learn very quickly the good behaviour needs to be regularly practised and rewarded to reinforce it otherwise the animals slowly forget their training.  Of course from their point of view there is no "good behaviour" or "bad behaviour" - only behaviour that often seems to result in some sort of reward so seems worth trying again - and behaviour that doesn't.

So, had we continued to reward Benji's mealtime behaviour we would still have a dog who didn't scrounge.  Unfortunately it's our discipline rather than his which has let us down!

In fact a year away with us in the caravan has turned him into a scrounging mutt.  He no longer goes to his basket when we eat....instead you'll find him hoovering any crumbs which fall to the floor, and many do as we eat outside a lot - and yes we do sometimes "accidentally" drop other bits of food onto the ground so he really has no incentive whatsoever to stay in his basket!

We're still not sure that, given the choice, he really wanted to spend a year away from home but maybe he just wanted to be away for Christmas to avoid this sort of humiliation!

Not satisfied with being patient while we do the necessary chores around the van, as he always was at home, he constantly gets under our feet wanting us to play.

At night he tries his hardest to join us on the bed rather than occupying  his own bunk at the far end of the caravan.

He's worse than any child for running away from wasps as he got stung within our first week away

He has got very used to his morning walk coinciding with visiting the camp shops or boulangeries to pick up a baguette, and now expects 'the knobby bit' as a treat for waiting outside.

He has been loved and adored by many other campers and campsite owners, which seems to have given him an elevated thought of where his rank is in our pack.........and he tries emotional blackmail whenever we go out and leave him behind by looking so dejected and hurt.

He reads our body language like a book and seems to know exactly what our plans are every minute of every day.

One thing which we've not lost from his previous hearing dog training is his reaction to the smoke alarm in the van.  As you can image even making toast sets the thing of in such a small place, so if we forget to remove it before any cooking takes place it tends to let everyone know we're cooking something.  Benji has a great dislike for its noise and has learnt that whenever Julie just lifts the lid to the cooker or opens the oven the alarm will probably go off, so he clears out before it has a chance and we usually find him hiding somewhere outside the van.

All in all he has been a marvellous travelling companion, and although having a dog with us has prevented us from doing some of the touristy things, we haven't regretted our decision to bring him with us at all.  In fact we've been kept much healthier because we've gone out of our way to make sure he has a lot of exercise so we've had a lot of exercise too.  We think nothing of a 10 km walk before breakfast......will this continue when we get home?

We think he misses home but we can't be sure.  When we arrive at yet another new camp site you can sense him thinking "OK, so where are we now?"

It will be very interesting to see his reaction when we walk in the front door in a couple of weeks time.  


But he has definitley enjoyed most of his time away and his favourite pastimes include sunbathing

and a day on the beach (river, lake or sea)

But when he ends up looking like this

he's not so keen on the mandatory visit to the dog shower

but after a wash and brush-up it's time for a visit to a beach cafe

and a sleep back at the caravan, guarding mum's favourite chocolates!

Camping a la Ferme

For most of our travels we got used to the fact that we were outside of the main summer holiday season and so we didn't need to book ahead.  We've really enjoyed turning up at sites and deciding after we arrive how long we stay.  This approach has only let us down once and that was when we arrived at a site in a remote region of Spain - the problem wasn't that they were full, they just weren't open! (You've probably read the blog entry!)

For July and August we were more cautious.  Before we left home last August we had already pre-booked a site in the Dordogne region for July and the first two weeks of August this year - and whilst we were in Les Landes we realised that we maybe needed to think about where we would head to after the Dordogne as it would still be school holiday time, so we booked ahead our next two stays, a week in the Poitou-Charente region and a week in the Loire Valley.

You would think by now that we would know what we want from a campsite but we are still learning.  We were nervous about being on a large commercial site during the school holidays but on the other hand we do like a site to have a bit of life to it. 

Despite websites and online reviews you never really know for sure what you are going to find when you turn up at a campsite but the site we've just left in the Poitou-Charente (La Renardiere) ticked most of the boxes. 

The camping field is large and spacious with about eight caravans in a semi-circle on one side and a swimming pool on the other.  The site was remote in the sense that it's not near any of the major tourist resorts or attractions but was fairly full and had a good buzz to it.  On our first night there we were invited to join our neighbours for paella and the owners organised a barbecue on our final evening (not just for us - they do one every week!) which was great fun and everyone on the site attended. 

Something else that we've really begun to value is wi-fi access.  I find it hard to believe that at home I would be very upset if our internet service was unavailable for a couple of hours but we spent six weeks on a site with no internet access at all.  A lot of sites provide wi-fi access, quite often just in a central area and some charge for it and some don't.  The best ones are those who provide it free across the whole site which is exactly what we had at La Renardiere.

About the only thing missing was a morning bread delivery but apart from that we'd say it was pretty close to a perfect Camping a la Ferme.  We'll be back!