ManWomanDogVan: July 2020

In mid-July, having said Good bye to our friends in Grenoble we headed back to the UK. The van did not need an MOT until in January next year, but we have decided to get it done now, during the holiday season, giving ourselves the chance to get back to Europe again. (Getting stuck in the UK in January seemed a less then attractive possibility.)

We allowed plenty of time to get to Calais, stopping in a few places on the way. (Grenoble to Calais is well over 900 km and our old van has a top speed of 90 km/hour at a push.)

In Chatillon-sur-Seine we visited the St Vorles church that was originally constructed in the 10th century. It was strangely, unevenly re-plastered and modernised inside, but with a couple of very old fresco’s untouched. It also contained a Holy Sepulchre. The little graveyard behind the church was unusually crowded and stark, void of greenery or flowers.

We stayed the night in Troyes taking the opportunity to look in on friends.

The following day we had a short break in Reims before moving onto Abbaye-de-Vauclair, a Cistercian monastery founded in 1134. It was nice to see that work is ongoing to make the site safe and restore some of the features of the buildings. It was also here that a couple of large dogs have adopted us for the afternoon/evening. They followed us around before settling down for the night under our van. I did actually call the local police, thinking that somebody might be missing the dogs (although they had no collar or any other visible sign that they had an owner), but apparently this was not their responsibility. Anyway, the dogs were gone by the morning and we have concluded that they were hunting dogs – it is not unusual in France to just let them go like that.

Laon was a lovely town, with a very intricate cathedral, and a street where shade was provided by many colourful umbrellas hanging over our heads.

We spent the night at Notredam-de-Lorette, the world's largest French military cemetery. I was going to go and see the sunset from the memorial listing the names of 580000 solders lost during the First World War, but I did not make it there that evening. I was surprised to find a rather large buffalo with big horns hanging out on the road (he seemed to consider whether to go inspect the car that pulled up on his left, or me in my lovely red vest on his right – I returned to the van quietly before he made his mind up…)

Another night near Calais, then we were on the Eurotunnel.

Before dropping off the van at the garage we have managed to find a new fridge, and even better, had help to fit it. A massive plus! All we had to do was enlarge the space, as the new fridge was actually taller than the hole in the cupboard. Have you ever tried to cut a work surface in half horizontally? Yeah, not so easy…

We spent the following couple of weeks with family and friends. It was great to catch up with people!

July 2020 - Part2 Map