Blog 4.8 - Nearly Done

Friday 6th October 2023

Only three more nights in France.

Bugger.

Oh well, it's been fun; apart from illness, but that's almost the norm. One or both of us always seem to go down with something while we're away.

We'll get over it though.

Today we move further east, maybe as far as east of Le Havre, putting us in close proximity of Dieppe ready for the early evening sailing on Monday.

At least the weather is still playing ball, with the forecast being for dry, calm and sunny conditions until early in the week, so we may even get a pass for a decent day on Tuesday and our run up the various clogged and stress-inducing motorways of the southern half of England. Why can't they be a bit more like their Gallic cousins?

We didn't make it into the Battle of Normandy museum yesterday, after all. By the time we'd visited the Bayeux Tapestry one, followed by a long lunch, then a walk around town we'd had quite enough, so repaired back to the van to put our plates of meat up and to read for a while.

Still, here are some shots of the Gate Guards, if nothing else.

Churchill 'Crocodile' flamethrower tank.

Canadian-built Sherman lookalike 'Grizzly'

German, originally Czech Skoda, Hetzer tank hunter.

We moved on fairly early for the trek past a busy (as always) Caen, through the famous-for-cheese (and very pretty) Pont l'Eveque,

Pont l'Eveque

and over the Seine at the magnificent Pont de Brotonne, which we first encountered while travelling in the opposite direction on the Tour of '22 (pictures there if required...).

It's an exceptionally elegant structure, with the two carriageways cantilevered off the central cable-supported spine - and there's no toll, unlike the less photogenic one to its west, nearer Honfleur and LeHavre.

Initially we'd contemplated using a Park for Night-indicated park-up in Fécamp, a coastal port, but this turned out to be a pretty grim dockside car park, and stuffed with very large lorries.

Moving on then, in the direction of Dieppe, and the coastal views are rather more pleasant, and after some pretty villages we settled on Veulettes-sur-Mer, which is vastly more appealing than Fécamp.

It has vibes of certain Sussex-y seaside areas. Sort of South Downsy, with white cliffs crumbling into the sea, stony beaches, and backed by low-lying river valleys and pasture. I know what I mean, anyway!

Mind you, Sussex doesn't have too many WW2 German gun emplacements, unlike here...

(You can just pick one out in the photo if you look very hard, two-thirds of the way up and to the right of the cliff face. It's clear that it was perfectly placed to lay down withering fire along the beach - had the invasion happened here, of course).

The village consists of a frontage of cafés, bars, and shops, with most of the residences perched above on the escarpment either side of the valley and across the gentler slopes on the front. Rather attractive all round.

These two pretty little mopeds, a Motobecane and a Velosolex were on site too, being hauled by one of the mohos and out on the roads much of the day. Very sweet they sounded, too.

3.8L single cylinder. Those handlebars must be huge.

We intend moving on tomorrow, though, a few miles inland, to a village Aire at Doudeville where we can re-supply with water and pick up some other essentials. We may then stay there one more night, or even return here - for what will be our last night on French soil, for now at least.

Saturday 7th October 2023

After a reasonably peaceful night (apart from the babble of the two late-arriving vans who proceeded to set up camp with chairs and tables and natter until the early hours) we woke to a bright, cool morning.

The plan, as already outlined was to move to Doudeville, so off we set, did the usual magical mystery tour trying to find the aire, and then changed our minds. Or rather, had our minds changed.

The motorhome aire, which looks perfectly fine and would have been ideal for a night or two, had been inundated with caravans, work vans, and with several lorries blocking the entrance.

Two guesses as to who...

So, the search goes on, and we move further inland after a quick visit to the Carrefour just across the way.

I'm just glad I could at least dump the waste this morning, but there was no water. It's not critical yet, but it'll need watching.

Sun's out though, and coupled with driving, the battery shouldn't be an issue.

Ah well; s**t happens.

We finished up at Étoutteville, just a few kilometres further down the road.

It seems pretty peaceful so far, but, as always, we'll see how it pans out.

(*Oh, it panned-out alright - see below).

There's not much here to be fair. Just a few moderately interesting houses, an epicerie/café/bar/restaurant kind of place (which was shut, almost inevitably, when we wandered up there at 3pm) and a church.

I did watch a bit of the footy on the pitch adjacent to the aire, but it failed to engage for long, although there were flashes of real skill on show.

Free kick. He scored via a deflection

The jury is still out on the decision whether we should stay another night, but I'm edging towards a move back north, I have to admit.

Sunday 8th October 2023

A beautiful bright morning.

Which is just as well, as the night before was, er, crap*.

*We'd got our heads down a little after eleven when, first, a van turned up. Bit late, I thought, but it happens. Then, the thump-thump of shitty synthesised bass started up.

Of course, I assumed it was our new neighbour, but no, it was emanating from the footy clubhouse maybe eighty metres away in direct line of sight.

Oh well, I thought, it's Saturday night and you have to expect a bit of noise.

Normally (normally!) it all seems to settle down by twelve or at least one, and I usually read until then so nae bother, but no. A quarter to five.

Four-forty bleedin' five!

Crazy.

If that's a regular occurrence, I feel sorry for the locals here just over the road.

We'll not be back though...

Orf we popped northwards again, to take up residence in Friday's aire in Veulette-sur-Mer once again (w3w///taunted.collects.thrashed).

Being a very sunny Sunday, and arriving at about noon, the aire was quite busy - mostly with cars. It would have been more annoying had we not found a space, as eight of the twelve Camping Car spaces were occupied by them, when just a few metres away there's a huge virtually empty area, behind 2 metre high barriers, for cars. But no, that would mean walking an extra 10 or fifteen metres to the beach, so let's occupy these large spaces provided for motorhomes. Pure arrogance and laziness, but we see it all the time, sadly.

Obviously the local council could reduce this by painting 'Camping Cars' on the spaces, and policing it, but hey, let's do the minimum.

You can guarantee that the car owners don't pay the fee that we do either...

Moan over. To the beach!

And it's quite warm down there, and somewhat infested with small flies that seem to want to take refuge in one's eyes, nose, and mouth. Still, a dollop of Admin's Special Bug Repellant seemed to help.

The flies don't seem to be affecting trade at the promenade bars and restaurants, mind. Those that are open are buzzing (pun only partially intended), and those that aren't open are probably going to regret it.

There can't be too many more weekends quite like this one as we fade into Autumn proper. Make hay, etc., etc.

We managed one coffee - at seafront prices, we won't be having too many. It's approximately twice the price here as inland!

The sea looks quite inviting though; flat calm and blue against a whispy yet azure sky.

But not quite inviting enough for us, thanks.

Back to the van for lunch and cups of tea, and relax, and read. And we even managed to move the van into our favoured end-of-row spot the same as we occupied on Friday, so the views are better and unencumbered by other vans. Nice!

I still can't quite believe, though, that by this time tomorrow we'll be heading into Dieppe for our ferry. It seems like five days rather than five weeks.

Monday 9th October 2023

Bright and calm, which is a blessing for our sailing back to blighty this early evening

We spent the day mooching around Veulettes-sur-Mer again. It's relatively busy today, considering it's Monday, but nothing like it was yesterday. Unfortunately, most businesses were closed, apart from a couple of restaurants setting up for the lunchtime diners, so we made coffees in the van and hauled them back up to the beach!

After lunch we ambled up to the headland at the eastern end of the beach to view the gun emplacements (turns out there are at least four, which are all well maintained and accessible. No guns though...), and the B17 memorial below.

It's a lovely area to explore, quite apart from the conflict aspect.

Soon enough, it was time to ready the van for the fifty-ish kilometre leg to the ferry port at Dieppe, where we arrived a little later than anticipated, but still in plenty of time. We were the last but one moho loaded, and crammed into the tiniest* space between an artic and the port side, and behind a strapped-down artic trailer, which made for a rather fraught manouevre later when we needed to extricate ourselves!

*I mean tiny. There was no way Admin could open her door, and I could just about open mine far enough to squeeze out!

The crossing was good, as anticipated; as boring as usual, mind, dark outside, and nothing to do but read, but I'm fine with that - it's a means to an end after all.

Bye, France

Port-side at Newhaven though, it became a little more interesting when we realised that the strapped-down artic curtain-side trailer blocking our exit wasn't going to be moved.

This became apparent when a deckhand appeared and indicated that I should pull out at a sharp angle to our right into the lane now vacated by the huge artic that had been a few inches to the side of us for the crossing.

It seems that, young and maybe inexperienced as she was, she had no clue that the average moho has rather a lot of overhang behind the rear wheels, and by pivoting the van sharply I would have left most of that overhang on the side-wall of the ship.

She eventually got the message after some remonstration on my part, and very grumpily proceeded to move a loose small trailer and a car from behind us so we could at least reverse and attain a more gentle forward exit angle.

You don't need that kind of stress!

Anyway, the rest of the exit was at least fairly rapid and easy, and we were quickly parked up on the beach front at Seaford just a few miles away, from where we couldn't actually see the sea (it was very dark without a moon) but could see the lights of the ferry, the Côte d'Albatre, a few miles to the west of us.

Tuesday 10th October 2023

This morning, though, is a different matter. It's still bright and sunny, like it has been for many days now, but our view has improved somewhat.

View from a moho bedroom window

Not a bad way to wake up; and it was a very peaceful night, too.

Morning ferry on the way into Newhaven

Today was going to be the day that we headed north, and home, but we've decided to extend the trip very slightly and have a day here and leave tomorrow morning.

This is a good and bad thing.

Good, in that we get to relax in a pleasant setting, get some lunch, and so on.

Bad, in that I've now run out of clean clothes apart from what I've kept for today...

Ah well, Admin can always open her window tomorrow!

As there is a 'Twelve Hours, with no return for two hours' restriction here, we moved down towards the other end of the promenade, where there is still free parking, albeit in a busier position. This, though, is a good thing, as we ended up quite close to the town centre, making it easy to walk in and pick up some milk (hooray, skimmed milk for the first time in weeks!) and something for tonight's dinner (hooray, curry for the first time in weeks!), plus a five litre container of water (cos we must be getting low).

We also topped-up breakfast with superb bacon ciabatta rolls and coffees at Lane's on Place Lane (w3w///spenders.clocking.herring) Highly recommended.

It's not a bad little town centre all things considered.

A relaxing afternoon by the front followed, although by now the sun had receded beyond a blanket of cloud and a very fresh breeze had sprung up, and we'll move back to our overnight spot in the evening.

We definitely picked the right day to cross the water, looking at the considerable choppiness out there!

Wednesday 11th October 2023

The wind's still doing its dance, and it's very very grey out there this morning, at sea and above the nearby cliffs.

I was up early with the intention of getting everything squared away ready for a prompt start on the slog northwards, but on reflection, let's just wait for some of the traffic to calm down a little.

We have all day. And we've had breakfast.

Now, a coffee calls.

Mind you, we'll have to watch the battery level as there's virtually zero solar input. Enough in there for that coffee though! And the water is still holding out (and we also have a five litre jug of 'Hydr8' as back-up, picked up from Morrison's yesterday).

26% battery and 9w coming in. It'd take a month of Sundays to fully charge at that rate (especially with 1223 watts going into the kettle!)

The battery went down to 23% after boiling the kettle, so we have nearly a quarter of its capacity left, after no sun for nearly 24 hours and Admin having cooked curry and rice on it last night, not to mention many cups of tea and coffee, so we can't complain really.

We've been virtually 'all electric' on this trip, which has been pretty easy during the sunny weather we had most of the time (ok, the fridge runs on gas much of the time, admittedly and some of the time we've had hook-ups as part of the Camping-Car Park admission). Maybe it's time to consider removing the virtually redundant gas hob, as we did the gas oven?

Food for thought.

We'd need to carry our tiny gas camping stove in the boot for emergencies, but that takes very little room and weighs the best part of nowt.

We'd also have to upgrade our 20a battery-to-battery charger to a more meaty one, and also consider a small (2kw, not 5kw) diesel heater (linked directly to the van's fuel tank - I definitely don't want a potentially stinky separate fuel supply in the van!) to take the chill off in the colder months, but it should all be doable I think.

We finally set off at 9.30am in the ever-gathering mist, and the ever-freshening wind.

Happily, though, it didn't get any worse as we travelled inland via the A23 and M23, in fact the breeze had slackened noticeably by the time we passed Gatwick.

Also happily, although there was an abundance of traffic (certainly compared to what we were used to over the preceding weeks) there were no snarl-ups to speak of and we drew onto our drive at just after 1pm.

Not bad.

Another foreign sojourn done then, so now we can get down to a few mods to the van, and then to planning the next trip.

Can't wait!

Total mileage: 1952