Beaune - Going Home

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Thursday - Back to Bois-en-Ardres

Thursday - The Green Room

It’s time to move on. I have to be back home for a family wedding on Saturday. So it’s “thank you”s and “goodbye”s to Nick and Anne who have put me up and put up with me and showed me around the local area for the last week. I load up the car and head for Calais. Fortunately this time Ken and my Satnav don’t want me to go through the middle of Paris and I have a fairly uneventful journey back to Bois-en-Ardres. The roads are almost empty. But the roads are expensive. It costs me about €40 in tolls for a journey of about 350 miles. On the next day I drove from Dover to Mansfield, a journey of just over 200 miles - there’s no toll to use the road but it will take me 7 hours because of the volume of traffic.

I arrive at Les Fuchsias in the late afternoon and Francis, who tells me that he’s never piloted a hovercraft in his life, puts me in the Green Room. I decide that Francis is far too sophisticated and cultured to understand any Jerry Springer jokes and follow him to the Green Room.
I love the Green Room!! It’s right at the top of the house and it’s GREEN. It’s all the reasons for not stopping at a Travel Lodge.
I go back to the same café I was in 8 days ago in search of food. I’m more confident in my ability to communicate in something a little bit more like French now. My confidence is immediately shaken when I order a beer and the barman asks me if I want it “Gallois” or Belgian - I think that’s what he said!! It’s back to sign language for me to work out that he’s asking me if I want draft or bottled beer. Like all the other bars everyone is very social here; everyone greets me and shakes my hand when they come into the bar.
There is football on TV. Lille, which is fairly local, are playing Valencia. I watch the match and make the right sort of disapproving noises when a French player gets elbowed in the face. The barman assumes that I must be a Manchester United supporter. No, Mr Barman, not Man U; and your next three guesses are all wrong too! Amazingly, he’s never heard of Stoke City! I try to explain to him that there are more than 4 football teams in England. “Ils sont dans le Premier League, mate!” He loads up a football game on his Playstation, tries to find Stoke City as a team to play and looks disappointed that he can’t find them. He continues to play the game and decides he is going to be Wayne Rooney. I decide it’s time to leave.

Friday - Home

It's an early(ish) start to get the 10 a.m. ferry from Calais to Dover. It's a very quiet crossing with not many passengers. There is quite a big party of French schoolkids on board and I’m beginning to think that the invention of the digital camera was not such a good idea {but I’m being a hypocrite here!}. I remember the good old days when all the kids had a walkman!
I spend the rest of the day driving home from Dover to Mansfield. And it does take all day! I average about 30mph on the British motorways on a Friday. Welcome home!!

And finally….

It's that Jerry Springer bit again…..It’s been a definite advantage stopping with friends, and I am grateful to Nick and Anne. I think I got to see so much more than I would have done if I was finding my own way round or on an organised tour. Anne’s superior knowledge of French enabled us to join in more in places like Ali’s Bar {compared with my efforts in the café at Bois-en-Ardres} and Nick knows the sort of places I will want to see and is able to keep feeding me those snippets of information he has already found out.

Do they have any regrets about coming here? None at all! Anne loves speaking French. I think if I were in a similar situation I would have days when I would just want to retreat from having to permanently concentrate on the language and have a “veg out” day using just English. Nick finds the lifestyle healthier despite the amount of wine he has to sample.
Something we talked about quite a lot is other people’s attitudes to us. Like me, Nick and Anne get annoyed with people who tell them how lucky they are to be doing what they are doing. We all felt that it’s more about making choices than being “lucky”. Nick and Anne quit their jobs in the UK in the hope of being able to find enough work to survive in France. To make it work they have had to live quite modestly and Anne has had to physically demanding work for a minimum wage.
The only slight regret I have is that I wasn’t able to have a go at working the Vendangemyself, although I’m sure the doctors who regularly inspect the Manky Foot will be pleased about that!

Next stop Ethiopia.

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Photos

In The Green Room
It's just green!!

Comments

[Nick James]

Wot no hovercraft?
I'm still reeling from the shock revelation about Francis's lack of hovercraft expertise. An illusion shattered. I've forgotten why I thought he was an ex-hovercraft pilot, but there must have been some reason. Any idea what he did do?

[WhereIsSteve]

He told me he used to travel over a lot on business and they gave him his own personal seat in the cockpit. I think that Francis is a man of many stories!! When I was there 2nd time he was being a weather expert and giving me an in-depth account of the weather over the channel.

[Joyce]

French Trip
Hi. Loved reading about your French trip. All three of you keeping so busy - certainly not Beaune idle! I never took up your invitation to be a friend on Facebook: I hate things where you have to sign up. Sorry. This website looks a lot easier. Do you remember a couple of summers ago when we all met up? You seemed to be the only person who was really au fait with texting then. I have since learnt to text though I can't do capitals. But I still haven't joined Facebook. Work gets in the way of me travelling much. I'm quite envious of a couple of friends whom we waved off on a gap year this week. And I know two other couples, my contemporaries, who have already taken recent gap years. One couple bought a camper van and went all around the UK. They only stopped travelling when the days got really short (and the nights got really long). Margaret and I had a day off together today. We drove over to Littlehampton intending to have lunch at the architecturally acclaimed cafe on the sea front. No way, we hadn't booked and would have to wait 45 mins. This is about the fifth time we've tried to get into this place and they've not served us yet. Once it was three minutes after 5pm and they stop serving for an hour between daytime service and evening service. Another time it was Mother's Day (and we obviously don't count on that score). But it never occurred to me that we'd have to book in late October - it's a cafe for goodness sake! So instead we had the all-day breakfast at the caff next to the crazy golf and the miniature railway, and very nice it was too. Then we went for a blow along the promenade, marvelled at how far the tide goes out at Littlehampton, and watched the funfair being erected ready for the Littlehampton Bonfire which takes place on October 31st rather than November 5th.