After my experience of yesterday evening I wasn’t up to preparing my evening meal so I ent to check out the bar, snack bar, restaurant and shop which all turned out to be one establishment and not very appealing so I headed back to my lonely shed only to be accosted by some Polish guys I had said hello to on the way out, they invited me over for a beer which was accompanied by slices of cold sausage and followed rapidly by some kind of clear hooch which tasted like a fruity vodka, they are over here working on a computer infrastructure project and living on site to keep expenses down, isn’t it amazing, half a dozen guys from what was a country behind the iron curtain and they all speak reasonable English and now French, they say that besides the English they got from school the rest came from Friends and other TV programmes. I left there feeling a bit woozy only to get nobbled by the Bulgarians a few vans down the road they said I had to join them for a drink because I had stopped off at the Polish camp but these guys were hospitality in itself I was given a glass of red wine and a bowl of something that resembled goulash, just what I needed to soak up the alcohol. They were over working on the same project as the Polish guys and included in their crew a Latvian guy, and two Italians and for the most part they spoke in Italian but again they all had enough English to ask questions and understand my answers. Needless to say I slept well last night.
It was hammering down this morning so I stayed where I was until it stopped before venturing out I had initially planned on visiting Versailles or the Louvre but the place was so busy that I abandoned the attempt and picked up some grub before returning back to the campsite. I did learn some things about driving over here, changing lanes is the norm and signals although the etiquette are not mandatory nor are the speeds in different lanes so undertaking is quite acceptable and flashing your lights if someone is going too slow is not illegal as it is in the UK, once you accept all this everything falls into place and there is consequently very little use of the horn.
When I got back I passed the main Polish caravan where one of the guys was having a cigarette on the deck and nursing his head, the main man on the Bulgarian van was cooking lunch for his buddies and invited me to join him but discretisation........ starting that early on the red wine was not a good idea with tomorrow’s drive to Calais in mind so I did the sensible thing and said thanks but no thanks.
Sunday, 7 October 2018
North again.
Yesterday was wind down day, I did manage to visit the museum that was closed earlier in the week and it was excellent, well worth the entrance fee.
I spent the rest of the day filling the car up, buying food for tomorrow’s 360 mile trip to Paris and then chilling out, the temperature got up to nearly 30C but the forecast is for cooler weather especially as I head north but it did mean I could wear the shorts and T shirt probably for the last time this year. Wrong it was sunny again this morning, so shorts again.
That was a long drive away from the toll roads, I stopped for a picnic at the halfway point and arrived here at Eurocamp Paris just after 5pm. After all Billy’s recommendations I was really looking forward to the experience but it was not to be. The reception was closed and after phoning the number scrawled on a piece of scrap paper stuck to the window the smelly little oik turned up took my name and ticked it off in the book and then gave me a folded up piece of paper and asked if there was anything I wanted to know. Obviously staff training is not a high priority with Eurocamp. It turns out the the folded up paper contained the caravan keys but it was the wrong van so he sorted that out then I had to drag all the necessary information out of him and go and find my new home for the next two days. I would have been better going to Rhyl! When I saw the outside of the grubby caravan my heart sank, it did not look anything like the illustration in the brochure and when I opened the door I nearly fainted from the cloud of obnoxious perfume that hit me, obviously some kind of air spray to hide the musty smell of the place. I know I did not book the premier class of caravan but this is real economy class and having just come from a wonderful isolated gite at less than the price of this shed I was not impressed. However, after thoroughly airing the place one opening the wine things got a little better, let’s see what happens tomorrow.
I spent the rest of the day filling the car up, buying food for tomorrow’s 360 mile trip to Paris and then chilling out, the temperature got up to nearly 30C but the forecast is for cooler weather especially as I head north but it did mean I could wear the shorts and T shirt probably for the last time this year. Wrong it was sunny again this morning, so shorts again.
That was a long drive away from the toll roads, I stopped for a picnic at the halfway point and arrived here at Eurocamp Paris just after 5pm. After all Billy’s recommendations I was really looking forward to the experience but it was not to be. The reception was closed and after phoning the number scrawled on a piece of scrap paper stuck to the window the smelly little oik turned up took my name and ticked it off in the book and then gave me a folded up piece of paper and asked if there was anything I wanted to know. Obviously staff training is not a high priority with Eurocamp. It turns out the the folded up paper contained the caravan keys but it was the wrong van so he sorted that out then I had to drag all the necessary information out of him and go and find my new home for the next two days. I would have been better going to Rhyl! When I saw the outside of the grubby caravan my heart sank, it did not look anything like the illustration in the brochure and when I opened the door I nearly fainted from the cloud of obnoxious perfume that hit me, obviously some kind of air spray to hide the musty smell of the place. I know I did not book the premier class of caravan but this is real economy class and having just come from a wonderful isolated gite at less than the price of this shed I was not impressed. However, after thoroughly airing the place one opening the wine things got a little better, let’s see what happens tomorrow.
Wednesday, 3 October 2018
Explorations and ruminations.
Monday’s visit to Sarlat was a completely different experience with no market stalls and shoppers clogging the streets, if fact a lot of the shops do not open on a Monday so it is the ideal time to explore the medieval quarter which is mostly pedestrianised and of course parking is also much easier.
Lidl has made as much of a penetration in France as it has in the UK but Aldi is trailing behind and their stores are not as large but they do sell an amazing houmous, have you ever noticed how many different spellings there are of this word, nearly as many as the different recipes there are for it on line.
The French love their dogs and I am with them on that, also on all my trips here over the last twenty years I cannot remember seeing any doggydoo which is the opposite of my first visit to Paris in the late seventies when walking along the pavement was akin to taking part in a marathon hopscotch competition. The other thing I have noticed is there are not so many cats around, this is particularly noticeable to me as the village I live in is overrun with them which probably accounts for the declining songbird population in the area. I am not against cats per se and I know that they do a good job of keeping vermin down in certain situations but house cats should be treated like pet dogs, not allowed out unless on a lead, one of the reasons that I propose this no doubt shocking proposition is that over here with a lower cat population there are a lot more song birds and they are less frightened of people and animals than they are back home.
Anyway back to exploring, yesterday’s visit to Les Eyzies de Tayac started well at the very informative Pole International de la Prehistorie, a centre providing lots of friendly information but then everything stopped, the main reason for the trip, the Musee National de la Prehistorie was not open, this seems to be a national trait ie we are open on these times except when we don’t want to be, so tough on you visitors who have travelled all this way only to find we are closed!
On the other hand today’s trip to Bergerac and the surrounding area was a complete success. Bergerac is a small pleasant city with a medieval heart near the covered market and it is especially vibrant on market day with all the visitors unlike Sarlat which feels more like a film set. I would recommend the Rue Des Fontaines with its pavement cafes and restaurants for lunch. However I joined the queue at the local sandwich shop with all the students and it was well worth it, my ham sandwich was an embarrassingly long baguette full of ham, salad, cheese, egg and mayonnaise, I am glad I took my book with me, I was there a while. From there I went on to Eymet, a Bastide town and then Issigeac another medieval town both worth dropping in to find out their history and of course enjoy the ambience, otherwise known as local wine.
Well thank you for putting up with my mini rants and I hope that this paints a picture of the places and things that I have seen.
Lidl has made as much of a penetration in France as it has in the UK but Aldi is trailing behind and their stores are not as large but they do sell an amazing houmous, have you ever noticed how many different spellings there are of this word, nearly as many as the different recipes there are for it on line.
The French love their dogs and I am with them on that, also on all my trips here over the last twenty years I cannot remember seeing any doggydoo which is the opposite of my first visit to Paris in the late seventies when walking along the pavement was akin to taking part in a marathon hopscotch competition. The other thing I have noticed is there are not so many cats around, this is particularly noticeable to me as the village I live in is overrun with them which probably accounts for the declining songbird population in the area. I am not against cats per se and I know that they do a good job of keeping vermin down in certain situations but house cats should be treated like pet dogs, not allowed out unless on a lead, one of the reasons that I propose this no doubt shocking proposition is that over here with a lower cat population there are a lot more song birds and they are less frightened of people and animals than they are back home.
Anyway back to exploring, yesterday’s visit to Les Eyzies de Tayac started well at the very informative Pole International de la Prehistorie, a centre providing lots of friendly information but then everything stopped, the main reason for the trip, the Musee National de la Prehistorie was not open, this seems to be a national trait ie we are open on these times except when we don’t want to be, so tough on you visitors who have travelled all this way only to find we are closed!
On the other hand today’s trip to Bergerac and the surrounding area was a complete success. Bergerac is a small pleasant city with a medieval heart near the covered market and it is especially vibrant on market day with all the visitors unlike Sarlat which feels more like a film set. I would recommend the Rue Des Fontaines with its pavement cafes and restaurants for lunch. However I joined the queue at the local sandwich shop with all the students and it was well worth it, my ham sandwich was an embarrassingly long baguette full of ham, salad, cheese, egg and mayonnaise, I am glad I took my book with me, I was there a while. From there I went on to Eymet, a Bastide town and then Issigeac another medieval town both worth dropping in to find out their history and of course enjoy the ambience, otherwise known as local wine.
Well thank you for putting up with my mini rants and I hope that this paints a picture of the places and things that I have seen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)