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So Much Cheese
This was a nice oneThe thing is that the availability of food here is just so different. You walk into a supermarket or any kind of similar shop in Africa and you can often get most of what you need. It might not be what you actually want but, somewhere, there will be something. You walk into a supermarket or food shop here and you can generally pick up not what you want but what you desire. And, most of the time, you didn't even know it. It is not that we have been in restaurants, bars or bistros all of the time - Pat is still having a bit of a Euro freeze time - it is just the choice available in the shops that is doing the damage, and much of that, to our waistlines.
This post covers our remaing time in France on this part of the run and then, a little surprisingly, takes us into the northern part of Italy.
Food and wine has been the feature so far, even outdoing the picture book scenery, traffic, buildings and museums. Normally, we start to manage our diet by ignoring the chocolate and sweets. But here there is so much that
you might have to ignore. The aisles of cheeses of all sorts, the processed meats and sausages and then you hit the wines. Cheap and so many new things to try. This place has a lot going for it in the lifestyle stakes.
Beer has been a little bit of a disappointment. There seems to be a competition in France to build the most powerful drop and sell it as cheaply as possible. I tried a few, wasn't terribly impressed and we basically stuck with the wine which had something new to present each day.
We have now collected the vehicle that will carry us, we trust, throughout Western Europe until about the first week in September. It is a Citroen C3, 4 door, diesel. A standard model with a manual shift but in a nice colour that used to be known as British Racing Green (Pat disputes this description of he colour). On the previous occasion that we leased a vehicle under the EuroDrive scheme' the bloke who did the handover did everything but drive the first 100km for us. The lady who handed over our Citroen was more of the 'here's your hat, what's your hurry'
Garish Ceilings
Some ceilings in the Louvre may be a little OTT persuasion. Once they actually collected us from the airport, a 45 minute wait for the transport, we were sped to the pick-up point, wheeled inside, basic paperwork, handover of keys and away we go. They gave us a map to the closest service station - they put only a few litres in the tank - but that was next to useless and we wandered the airport area for 30 minutes or so before spotting some service station flags.
Our destination first day in the car was not too far away at Carriere sous Poissy, which is to the North West of Paris proper. The Seine ran alongside the apartment hotel. There were nice walks down each side of the river. There were hypermarkets nearby and we were set. We had been informed by everyone, guide books, locals etc, that we would be able to pick up everything we needed for camping at one of the big hypermarkets on the outskirts. One place in particular was supposed to be excellent for camping gear. So off we went to Verlizy which was touted as one of the largest shopping malls in Europe. That is as may be but it didn't really
Mercury
Worth the price of entry IMHO - even without her head. stand up well as a place offering a good selection of camping gear. The hypermarket there, Auchan, had none. The Decathlon - the specialist store - had some but not really what we were after. Go Sport had more but was still inadequate. Day 2 we walked the 5 km to another hypermarket near us at Chambourcy. Carrefours had a better range and the Decathlon there had a reasonable selection. We are now kitted up. More expensive stuff than we had bought on our previous time travelling in Scandinavia, but better quality and a lot more comfortable.
Travelling on motorways you tend to get an impression of the country. If you tell the satnav to avoid toll charges you can get a better look at the country - and it will be a lot cheaper. If you tell it to avoid motorways and toll charges then, after it has a conniption, you get a route that may or may not be further than other options but takes at least twice as long. We told our satnav to take us around to the north of the Paris metropolitan area, through Chantilly, Meure and Sens to end up somewhere on the
road to Auxerre. There wasn't really a major purpose to any of this. They just sounded like nice places and avoided going through central Paris. Most of the villages we travelled through were nice places. The one where I missed the red light until the last minute had a lady who had a fine knowledge of some language or other but, other than that, we didn't get to meet to many locals.
The Auxerre Municipal Camping Ground was a well set up campground. Green, clean and friendly - but with no camp kitchen. Something we had been assured would be available everywhere. Luckily we hadn't been too confident and we were still able to cook on our newly purchased gas 'stove'.
Auxerre, in the bits we walked around near the L'Yonne River, was serene and attractive. The traffic was all blocked up in various places, but, as long as you are not in your car, this just means that the pace is nice and slow. Good river with some blokes fishing - most with very long and strong rods for a reason that eludes me - but apparently catching very little, a canal boat moored near a lock
Napoleon's Crown
Not so ostentatious as some and weir. Very pleasant. And, perhaps more importantly, our new kit on its first hit out worked like a charm.
The great Switzerland debate was in full swing on the way to Auxerre and continued overnight. One view held that it was more or less on the way and we should take the chance to go through now. The other was that it would still be there when we made the circuit back up through Italy to France and Spain, everything is pretty close anyway so we can pick it up later and it will be too cold now. To keep our options open we decided to go to Chamonix which sits very close to the borders of France, Italy and Switzerland under the shadow of Mont Blanc. After a day in the villages, and with the need to cover some kilometres we took the motorways.
The journey was interrupted by Dijon. This is the spiritual home of French mustard and there is a lot for sale about the place. I suspect that it is not made here anymore though. Dijon, though, does have a large shopping mall. It probably has some spectacular churches as well but, on
this occasion, the shopping mall won out. We were relatively late getting in to Chamonix, found the only camp ground that was open and set up. Then we needed to decide which one was Mont Blanc. It doesn't sit on its own you see. The one that we thought it should be couldn't possibly be it. You wouldn't build a cable car to the top of Mont Blanc - would you? But then it was not the only one with a cable car, so possibly.
Italy it was so we paid our 35+ Euros and proceeded through the Mont Blanc tunnel and the sundry others that don't get as much coverage and into the north of Italy. Off the motorways as soon as we could and we proceeded towards a campground handily situated near Milan. Acres and acres of rice paddies, I think, and large apartment buildings were the order of the day as we ran down into the plains area after we came out of the pretty mountain villages. The area seems to be much more heavily populated than the areas we came through in France and has a lot less of the old buildings to retain.
It is hard to pick up an English/Italian dictionary unless you are in either an English speaking or Italian speaking country. We spent the first day on the road trying to figure out the signs, as you do. A lot are self explanatory but there are some that are too difficult without some sort of help. We didn't even know how to ask where we might buy one or what a dictionary might be called. A bookshop is a 'libreria' and a dictionary is a 'dizzionario'. Not difficult at all really. We did find a camping guide for the whole of Europe in Italian of course but we reckoned that we would not be too much of a problem. To demonstrate our confidence we picked a place from it and plugged the coordinates in to TomTom.
Now what would you think that 'asfaltata' means? In connection with camp sites? Obvious really but, unfortunately, not immediately to us on that day. We duly arrived at a service station on the outskirts of Milan, after moving through the streets where there lots of scantily clad girls smiling winningly at the motorists returning home from work, to find an ashpalt/bitumen/black top/ tarred
Seine
through Carriere sous Poissy area where you might, if you were desperate, park a camper van for a night. Out tent was not going there.
Plan B for me was a reasonable hotel in the vicinity. But how would we establish that we needed it for the night and would Pat need to remove some of her kit to get in? No. Off we went to a place that definitely looked like it catered for tents. At least no 'asfaltata' or 'asfalto' as it also spelt. Lecco sounded good. Just up the motorway - to hell with the cute little villages at this time of the afternoon/evening - and we will camp in a nice green place by a beautiful lake.
That last little bit turned out to be correct. But first we had to negotiate the Milano traffic. At rush hour. And possibly in revenge for requiring her to take us along those winding roads through those dinky little villages all day instead of down a nice straight motorway where she had to do little other than say 'in 800 metres, go straight on', TomTom took us through the middle of a magnificent set of traffic confusion. Not jams. They moved,
Getting Fit
On the banks of the Seine at Poissy albeit slowly. A couple of feet into the path of an opposing vehicle, edge a little further. Got him! And then pick up speed so that no one else is game to take you on until, in another few meters you are again blocked and the process starts again. At first, I found it just a little daunting but, after a while, and constantly reminding myself that this is a fully insured leased vehicle, I began to enjoy it all. Daunting but strangely enjoyable.
A lot of the streets we were on were nice and wide. In other places you would have lanes marked. They don't seem to bother that much here, partly I suspect because no-one would take any notice. Three lanes can become 6 or swing back to 3 depending on the traffic numbers. It makes sense really. Roundabouts are a special thrill. I have absolutely no idea how we didn't get hit but we didn't. The large motorbike that tried to squeeze through in the 6 inches between me and crash barrier, at speed, was able to stop and go around the other way. The bloke talking on his mobile phone with one hand holding a
Striding Out
Trying to work off the tucker smoke out of the window with the other missed us at the last moment. All good.
We thought we were through the worst of it when we hit a toll booth on the autostrada. 20 booths, or thereabouts. But the scene when we emerged was amazing. The 20 lanes of cars coming out of the booths had to go into to 2. Just 2. Bedlam again. And to add to it a couple more lanes coming in from the side.
It all took a while but we made it to Lecco on a lake near Lake Como by about 7.30pm. Some lovely people at the campground found us a nice grassed area beside the lake where we could pitch our tent without too much worry about the 150 or so on-site vans and mobile homes in the area. It really is a lovely spot with swans protecting their nest somewhere in the vicinity, people fishing, massive mountains and a lovely lake. The place was worth 2 nights.
We are now camped near Venice at a place called Punto Sabbioso which is just a short ferry ride from Venice and all of the islands. Nice camping area -
all grass and no asfaltata - at a reasonable price for here and we will stay a few days and have a bit of a look at the town/.
After we have our fill, it will be across Croatia, Serbia, Makedonia and into Greece.
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