026 - Close En-COW-nters of the Normandy Kind
Spain, 29th October 2004
Bonjour nos ami(e)s!
Okay, it should have been '¡Hola!', we know, as we're actually sending this from España, but since this Bulletin's mainly about adventures in La Belle France, we thought we'd stick with the theme ...
There's never enough time, is there? That last couple of weeks in YUK when we decided on our DOD (date of departure), booked the ferry and began the final countdown, was pretty manic. We're generally fairly organised and had been gradually working through our spreadsheets of Things-To-Do-Before-The-Off. But, to plagiarise Rabbie Burns, "the best laid plans o' mice and persons, gang aft aglee". So of course there were some Totally-Unexpecteds, some Could-Have-Been-Predicteds and a smattering of You-Should-Have-Darn-Well-Seen-Them-Comings to throw our Project Plan somewhat out of kilter. Never mind, we decided to press ahead and peep back over our shoulders if necessary, once we were on the other side of La Manche.
Autumn Collection
New for 2004, as they say, was going the Portsmouth to Caen route over the Channel. Bit more expensive (especially on a one-way ticket - to leave our options open for the return next year), but we figured that with the much shorter distances both sides of the water, we'd about break even taking the diesel costs in to account. So after two last gut-bustingly frenetic days grappling with the remains of the spreadsheets, we tootled off from Sussex down to Portsmouth in time to have supper with Dave's Mum, Anne, and her partner John in North End. It seemed somewhat strange 'wild' camping in the street outside their house - and fortunately it not being an area prone to disorderly cavortings of local disinfected yoof or similar, we had a pretty peaceful night with the happy prospect of a journey of just a mile or two down the road in the morning to the Cross Channel ferry port.
We have a kind of household ('lorryhold'??) rule that we can tell a story, anecdote or Fascinating Fact up to six times (Jeni's trainer-persona has been angling for this to be increased by one, as according to learning theory, we need to be exposed to something seven times before it properly sinks in. However, this has not been ratified by the Full Fruitbat Committee, so six it remains.) Attempting to tell a story which exceeds that quota can provoke gruesome reprisals. There are two stories (one each) to which this rule does not seem to apply (why ever not?) - Dave's 'I travelled Europe on a Goldwing Motorcycle in 1906' tale and Jeni's 'I was born and brought up in Portsmouth and the Cross Channel ferry port's now situated roughly at the end of where our garden used to be'. You can imagine, then, the frenzied retelling of the tale, with additional embellishments, that was provoked by this occasion as we headed back down what used to be Commercial Road, Portsmouth, the next morning. (Jeni managed to slip in a word about the ferry port and the back garden too !)
Fellow Travellers
The other New For This Season item was meeting up with our travelling companions, Sean, Daisy, Gypsy and Rusty, who had already done one hop over the water, from the Isle of Wight, by the time they met up with us on the docks just after seven in the morning. Sean is Dave's nephew, or so Dave's been telling everyone for years, Daisy is Sean's partner, Gypsy their little Staffordshire terrier and Rusty their doughty vintage (and we mean vintage!) VW camper van. Rusty and Gypsy are perfectly colour-co-ordinated - even Rusty's interior décor (snow-leopard fun fur throughout) blends delectably with Gypsy's black and white blotches. We now realise that it's the ideal camouflage for Gypsy when she doesn't want people to notice her taking a nap indoors! In some parts of France and Spain, Staffie terriers are listed as a dangerous breed and have to be muzzled in public places - but you couldn't hope to meet a gentler dog than Gypsy. She'd be hard pushed to savage a slipper!
Anyroadup, this merry little band had decided to do something they'd wanted to do for a while - a bit of travelling in mainland Europe, picking up enough casual work along the way to keep Gypsy in doggie-munchies and the rest of them in food and fuel (oh and the occasional bottle of wine). So, we offered them a tug in our slip-stream to keep their fuel costs down, and to put them in touch with a few people who might need some help over the coming months.
It was only when we were all safely on the ferry that Sean broke the devastating news to Dave. That actually he wasn't Dave's nephew, and never had been. They are in fact some variety of cousin. It's Dave and Sean's Mum, Jacquie, who are cousins … so what does that make Dave and Sean? Second cousins thrice worzled or something like that, probably.
We're off!
To be entirely even handed, Sean and Daisy also delivered devastating news to Jeni. It was that they were no longer vegetarians. Jeni had been counting on them as gastronomic allies but this hope was shattered as they (closely followed by Dave) came back from the ferry's cafeteria, grinning from ear to ear, brandishing their Full English Breakfasts like trophies. Huh! However, Jeni was able to purse her lips smugly later, as the crossing got decidedly choppy and the three of them started looking a bit green round the gills !
Then, some five hours later, we disembarked and set off on the next chapter of The Great Adventure. Until, that is, we had to pull up 500 metres from the ferry terminal as we'd managed to get into different traffic lanes, necessitating Rusty doing a rapid twice-round-the-one-way-system manoeuvre. Then we were off!
Normandy Landings
Our first bit of practice at convoy driving was quite short, as we'd arranged to descend on our friends Steve and Sheila, not far from Percy. So less than two hours later, the wagons rolled through their front gate (with Fruitbats feeling pleased as punch they'd remembered the route through a series of lovely little Normandy villages right up to the door) and Steve and Sheila's lives were reduced to mayhem for the next fortnight.
Actually, that's not strictly true (we don't think, though from their beds in the quiet wing of the Rest Home, Steve and Sheila might disagree!). We set up camp on their land, having determined that the new little 'runway' to the garage could be a tad wider for the likes of VeeJay the Lorry (that'll be the mashed and gouged grass on one corner which gave that away - whoops! sorry!), and were all bustled inside the house for a cosy and welcome evening meal.
Chain(saw) Gang
During our couple of weeks' stay in Normandy, The Lads, Dave and Sean, gave Steve a bit of help with some jobs that it made more sense to tackle mob handed.
First off was helping to clear out an ex-animal shed ready to make a utility room in part of it for the washing machine, dishwasher, tumble dryer and a sink. The other part was destined to be Steve's workshop with storage for equipment and machinery they use on the house and land. Workshop-filey-heaven for them all! They had to remove the original wood and metal dividers between the animal stalls - these were great hefty things that took all three men, behaving as butchly as possible, to move! Reclaimers-R-Us was definitely the ticket - loads of wonderful old oak that could be re-used for shelving, props for the workbench and 101 other possibilities. In fact a raised vegetable bed and the beginnings of a rustic gazebo emerged from the pile of reclaimed wood during our stay.
Dave - 'you can never have too many double-sockets' - was in his element (ugh!) installing lighting and power in the utility room side, to give Steve (who is also a 'Sparks' by trade originally) a bit of a breather from the old electrics. Jeni and Sheila (who were themselves busy-busy-busy with other things of course, but who had to sit outside the barn in the sunshine reasonably frequently drinking coffee) were creased up about the sound effects coming from within. Much grunting and groaning from The Oldies as they lamented their dodgy backs and ageing knees, whilst Sean sprinted around lithely and never seemed to stop! (Mind you, he's still on the buoyant side of 30!)
A good friend of ours in the UK, Jenny, met an extraordinary couple when she was on holiday earlier in the summer. Apart from the charm of the man (who, quite matter of factly, related how he'd tackled a fellow tourist who cast a bit of a shadow with his sun umbrella - "I told 'im I'd rip 'is 'ead off an' vomit darn 'is neck". Hmm. Nice guy!), the female of the species described the balance in their relationship - "I'm the ackademickal one. 'E's more wiv 'is 'ands". The womenfolk, when Jeni had described this perfect pair to Sheila, decided it was an apt description for the current situation as the 'gals' did bits of work on their respective computers, definitely ackademical-like, and left the menfolk to be "more wiv their 'ands"!
Safari!
There was a bit of a domestic crisis in the house during our stay. We thought that our hosts were looking a tad haggard on a couple of mornings and we began to worry that our visit was all too much for them. However, we discovered that they'd spent most of the previous couple of nights on safari, trying to curtail the unwelcome visits of small creatures with voracious appetites.
Steve reckoned that it was Sheila who wasn't at all that keen on those little furry f(r)iends that you inevitably find in old country houses, especially converted barns and stables. But watching Steve dash around with the filler, squirting it into every hole that he could find, we had to wonder if they were also high on his phobia list. We're talking mice of course. Steve and Sheila related some tales of the sheer cunning of these critters in a place they'd lived in some years before - they couldn't understand how on earth walnuts had got into an electricity fuse box, high on a wall just adjacent to a big old beam. Yes, truly, it was the mice wot did it!
Every last possible entry-point was blocked off, it seems, and by the time we left, Steve and Sheila were having quiet nights again without the scufflings of the snatch-squads on fruit-bowl raids (we're still talking the mice here, not Rollingfruitbat-fruit-bowl raids!). It was back to being serenaded only by the pleasanter sounds of the barn owls which lived in the huge oak trees nearby (and which we could see at dusk swooping across the neighbouring fields).
While we're on Nature Notes, we can't describe our time in this part of France without at least a passing reference to the ubiquitous white and brown, hairy Normandy Cows. There was a field full of very gentle heifers next to us, who would periodically lumber across to the dividing fence and peer curiously over at the goings on, stand with their heads lowered, eyeball to eyeball with the dogs or set themselves in line demonstrating the skills of synchronised cud-chewing. There was something very restful about watching them, and where many of them have brown patches round their eyes they look kind of sorrowful (or as if they've smudged their eye make-up, said Jeni prosaically, one day!).
And, on the subject of dogs, it reminds us of the trials of poor Daisy. It all got very confusing. She (that's Sean's partner, Daisy) kept lying down a lot ['Lie down, Daisy!'] and getting in to bed a lot ['In your bed, Daisy!'] until we started referring to Daisy-Dog and Daisy-Daisy ... ! Made it a lot easier for her and she started to like us all better, we think, since she realised we weren't ordering her around as much as she'd previously thought.
Daisy-Dog and Gypsy-Dog were rather aloof with each other, following a brief spat on the second day of our visit, when they both tried to claim a Good Smell simultaneously on a walk. After that, Gypsy kept well off Daisy's home turf, and instead amused herself by working out how to get into The Lorry's new awning, even when it was all closed up. She found a door-zip which she pushed up with her nose, and popped in for regular inspections. She developed a liking for taking one of Dave's clogs out for a walk or skipping round The Lorry with it in her mouth, emitting howls of joy. She seems to have fallen in love with his clogs!
Out and About
We all had a trip out together one Sunday across to the coast - it's about half an hour's drive to the West coast. There are some lovely long sandy beaches with fabulous sand dunes and lots of hunting for shells to be done. The dogs had a fine time. We visited Granville, an interesting and lively old town perched on a steep hill with a fortified citadel on the top. It has lots of narrow, winding roads and some dramatic high viewpoints looking out over towards the bay of Mont St. Michel, the islands of Chausey, the ferries going off to the Channel Islands and along a great stretch of coastline. Apparently the town has a rich history of piracy too.
Naturally we had to take Sean and Daisy in to nearby Villedieu Les Poeles ('Town of God of the Frying Pans') on market day - some of you know how Jeni in particular loves a good local market. It's a fascinating town with wonderful old alleyways and courtyards, and it's one of only a dozen or so places in Europe left with a working bell-foundry. If copper and brass are your pleasures, this is the place to for you - everything from life-size models of deer, to warming pans to goblets (and all other inanimate objects, ornamental or practical, in between) in shiny golden metals.
More Dishes
There were goings-on with more than just brass dishes during our stay in Normandy. Some of you know that it's been on on-going debate within Team Fruitbat as to whether The Lorry should be kitted out with a TV. We do have a TV unit that's used just for video and DVD playing, so occasionally we can have a slob-out and watch a film. So far, for a whole year, we've resisted TV since it would mean decoders and satellite dishes when we're travelling - extra baggage, and a danger of encroaching upon Boggle/Rummikub time in the evenings.
One of Jeni's Pet Hates is seeing folk arriving on Camping Sites, hurtling out of their Camping Car/caravan and spending the best part of an hour setting up the satellite dish, leaping in and out between TV set and dish, trying to get a good signal. They don't even seem to go for the crucial basics first, like putting down the stabilisers, turning the gas on and making a cup of tea/coffee. Truly, this is a phenomenon much seen - and much mocked. We've always considered this most undignified behaviour and far beneath us (not, we hasten to add, just because we might lust after those automatic dishes attached to the van roof which are operated by remote control and tune in as if by magic to the strongest satellite signal).
Imagine Jeni's horror, then, returning from a trip out with Sheila one day to find Dave, Steve and Sean strapping a 'spare' satellite dish to a scaffold pole, and experimenting with a decoder that Steve no longer needed, behaving just like the satellite-dishers of her worst nightmares. Hmm. Some kind of shady deal between Steve and Dave? We should be told!
They managed to get one English-speaking station (and about 2058 obscure stations in most other world languages), and eventually gave up (eventually - after two days!) … but will this be the last we hear of this?? Watch this space ...
Provisions Plus
Steve and Sheila's neighbour, the personality-plus diminutive elderly farmer whom we met earlier in the year when we visited, popped over on a regular basis to check out the visitors. Sheila's convinced she sits up at her farmhouse window keeping an eye on what's going on around. She knew, for example, that we'd arrived in the pouring rain and was commiserating with us having to set up camp in the wet; and she knew exactly what time Sean and Daisy drove off (8.50 a.m.) the day they left to go down towards Cholet to stay with friends (and we'd been under the impression they'd made an early start about 6.30 a.m.!).
We met Madame La Fermière and her husband last time we were here, when Dave tried to mend their ailing 'mini-tracteur' - they are such a delightful couple. Steve and Sheila went to her 70th birthday party recently - a big restaurant lunch that lasted 5 hours. Then it was all back to the farm where Madame cooked a lamb, so they had an evening meal that lasted another 4 hours. By 1am Steve and Sheila (the only English people in the party of about 20) were exhausted and toddled home - to the mirth of the rest of the company who were up for carrying on for another couple of hours!
Madame, small in stature, big on personality and apparently always in big welly boots, popped over to see us one day while the man from the abattoir was at their farm. He had come to kill another of their lambs - she said she doesn't mind cutting them up afterwards, but can't watch them being killed. Who can blame her? She paid us a series of visits to bring us all produce - one day a couple of huge courgettes and some hazlenuts (protein for the strange one who doesn't eat la viande! She, and probably most French people, can't understand how Jeni is still alive not eating meat - she thinks Jeni lives on salad and vegetables!). Another time there was a bag of walnuts waiting outside the awning door. On a couple of evenings we saw her just inside Steve and Sheila's land picking the blackberries ... then she turned up the next day with pots of blackberry jam for all of us. We felt well provisioned!
We managed to hijack Steve one morning as he was returning from the village patisserie with Sunday treats of wonderful strawberry tarts. 'Oooh, how lovely, Steve - my favourite!' cried Jeni. 'Shall we convene for coffee and strawberry tarts in half an hour?' It was only later that we realised that Steve was probably trying to sneak past The Lorry without being spotted, so he and Sheila could enjoy two strawberry tarts each! He didn't take into account that we're a bit like truffle hounds when it comes to fruit (in any form) … we can sniff it out at 100 metres!
And so, farewell then ...
Finally it was time for the Fruitbats to head South again, catch up with Sean and Daisy who were a couple of hundred kilometres further down, and leave Steve and Sheila to re-establish some semblance of order in their lives. But not before they'd insisted on treating us to a meal out on our last night.
We were instructed not to 'dress for dinner', casual was the order of the evening, and thus we bundled into the car. They drove us through the nearest couple of towns, which we might have expected would be our dinner-destination, round the villages and out onto the dual carriageway. Ten minutes down and we began to think it odd. We knew there were good restaurants nearer than this, where were they taking us?
We eventually pulled into a large parking area with over one hundred of the largest lorries we've ever encountered; massive 24 wheelers with number plates registered from Minsk to Morocco, or so it seemed. This was the surprise eatery, one of the most popular truckers' stops in France, and allegedly the number two in the Routier guide!
Sheila and Jeni seemed to be in their element surrounded by formica-topped tables crammed with macho drivers of all nationalities, discerning eaters every one. No 'greasy spoon' or Little Chef offerings here - oh no! This was the best in French wholesome fare, four courses of it with wine and cider on all the tables, replenished as often as required. Steve and Dave tried to look really butch and blend in, offering to take Jeni and Sheila outside to show them their 21 gears, air brakes, double articulations and power steering. Oooh, they know how to impress a gal! It was such a delicious meal and the most fabulously incongruous setting - perfect for a farewell do!
So, off we went next day, waving fond goodbyes (or were those tears of relief we saw streaming down our hosts' faces?), but with Steve and Sheila threatening to chase us down through Spain in their Camping Car and meet up again in a few weeks time. First, though, it was a short hop south west to find one of the most scenic views from our bedroom window that we had yet encountered ...
Happy fruiting, folks!
Take care and be happy.
Love,
Dave et Jeni
xx
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