Bailleul, France 8th May of the great adventure, and we’re securely camped up in the driving wind and rain, not quite as we imagined our first day “en France”. It could have been even more frustrating, but more of that later . . .
When we started to conceive our great get away, we bought into a dream, although nobody sold it to us. We constructed it out of thin air. Wrapped and packaged it. Tied a pretty ribbon around it, and despatched it into the future. All we had to do was get there, or, as it is now, here. Unwrap it and “live it”.
At times I had to stop myself from wishing my life away just to get to this point. Childlike, December mentality kicks in and your focus hones in on the 25th. Nothing else matters, or so it seems. On arrival, the reality of the now has taken over and unforeseen practicalities hide around every corner.
Let me give you an example.
Beastie, is packaged as a 4 berth (5 if you convert some of the seating). Great, we thought. Should the time arrive, then we have room for two more. Hmm – it’s not that straight forward. There’s something called maximum payload and before our trial UK excursion, we discovered that we were going to be perilously close to being over our payload of 340kg. So I started to weigh everything.
Here’s the maths, if Beastie was a Winnebago we’d have to do the math, thankfully he’s not.
Payload = 340Kg
Us 150Kg; 1 scooter 100kg; 2 scooter helmets 5kg; 1 scooter top box 3kg = 258kg
1 scooter ramp 15kg; table & chairs 14kg; 2 bikes 30kg; bag of tools 5kg = 64kg
Essential electrical stuff – laptop, Nespresso m/c :-), kettle, hairdryer etc 7kg = 7kg
Plates, cups, glasses, saucepans & cutlery etc 8kg; towells, bedlinen 6kg = 14kg
So even without adding clothes, food and loads of other stuff we were already over the top and no room for more humans.
When queried with the dealer we were told “well, it is specified in the technical section of the brochure” – I was too dreamy eyed to take that in. So before this trip I became obsessed with weighing everything. Even so, we thrust everything we “thought” we needed into Beastie until we could see his Pot Belly starting to stretch at the seams.
We “that’s us over here” can be such “plebs” sometimes. The reason we are spending a week or so in northern France is to visit some of the WW1 sites. On entering Bailleul around lunchtime we were looking forward to indulging ourselves with our first cup of French coffee and maybe a “petite patisserie” not to mention putting into practice our newly honed French ackson. All seemed very quiet. We parked up in the huge “centre ville” car park and wondered where everybody was. It was just gone 1.30pm, blowing a rainy gale, with the temperature feeling sub-zero. We togged up and ventured out. Everywhere was shut. Perhaps it’s just the customary two hours closing down time – we just needed to wait until after 2pm. So we warmed up by taking a look inside the massive church overlooking the square. A novelty, a church warmer inside than outside. 2.15pm passed and still the town had a Marie Celeste feel to it. Where was everybody? Confused and a little disgruntled we left and made our way to our first site only to be greeted with a hand written note on the reception door saying that the office was closed for the rest of the day and could we phone “this” number on arrival.
Now ever since touching down over here we have had a communication problem. Most of our trip is planned to cover rural France and despite moving both phones over to EE with their 4G Orange coverage in France, neither phone had signal. Time for a Nespresso and a sandwich (benefits of MOHOing) and a bit of a ponder.
Eventually the on-site owner materialised at the side of Beastie. Beamed down Arnie style, although fully dressed I might add. She ushered me into her office den where we spoke brokenly in each other’s language. Confusion reigned briefly as we struggled to make sense of our pronunciation. With grace and a bowlful of humour we managed “et voila” we had our first nig
ht booked.
However, the unwelcome weather was having none of it and cast a glum shadow over our joy at finding our first stop. At least I could utilise my bespoke drying implements.
Mystery solved – 8th May is a National Holiday over here celebrating Charles de Gaulle’s announcement that WW2 had ended.