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.