Well then – what are the main differences between Motor Home travel in France and the UK?
First of all space and lots of it. France is a bigger country and as such the roads are less busy – you can travel miles outside the major towns and cities without seeing too many other vehicles. As it was our first MoHo trip abroad, we played safe opting for the larger and quicker toll routes but even the non-toll roads were refreshingly quiet.
On this occasion my husband Paul did the driving while I acted as a back-up to the Sat Nav (!) and ‘toll-payer in chief’ – with our vehicle being right hand drive, the ticket/pay machines were conveniently on my side. On this subject there is one useful tip we wished we’d been given.
If your vehicle is over a certain height, your toll ticket and pay request can be issued from the top of the machine supposedly to make things easier to reach. At our first toll stop we couldn’t understand why we were pressing a visible ticket dispenser button and nothing was happening. Doh – the reason was that we hadn’t cast our eyes upwards. Ah well, one of many lessons learned but just to out-fox you, not all the pay machines are the same. C’est la vie.
The French campsites are also more spacious and in most cases have better facilities on offer. Our trip was for two weeks travelling from Calais to the French South West, so we stopped at three sites on the way down – in St Valery; Fresnay-sur-Sarthe and Chateauroux – before staying with a friend at her beautiful home in Caumont. All the sites had decent shower facilities, areas for laundry and even outside the main season, you could still pre-order bread, breakfast pastries etc for next day delivery. Site prices averaged around £17 in equivalent euros and the individual pitches were mainly larger than in the UK, some with neatly hedged borders. It was like having your own private garden!
If you don’t want to stay at a main site, you can prop up for a night at one of the many road-side ‘Aires’ which often have water top-up and waste disposal, toilet areas, with some having the equivalent of motorway service eateries only better. We only stopped overnight at one Aire in Honfleur. Less private space but within walking distance of the town and run by the council. so there was a small charge of £10 (11 euros) for 24 hours. The place was packed but many of these Aire users went out to local bars and restaurants, giving a boost to the local economy.
Could we have similar arrangements in the UK? France has the clear advantage of space and a long history of Motor Home/Camper Van travel. On this side of the pond, an Aire style system would only work where the surrounding roads could cope – yet there is still plenty of scope to make things better for UK MoHo visitors and users.
We had our pet dog, Bonnie, with us and thankfully most of the local bars and eateries we visited were dog friendly, almost as much as Cornwall. The Pet Passport was straight forward, as was the compulsory visit to a French vet to get the required worming treatment and health check before heading home. (Pooch Bonnie that is – not us!).
To sum up our first trip? As the French say ‘tres bon’ and overall, it was a lot easier than we expected. Let’s just hope it stays that way, given the current ‘B’ situation – on that score, not a single French person we met even mentioned it. A refreshing reminder of life before June 2016. Remember that?
My book choice for travelling this time around was Eric Idle’s ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’ which is described on the cover as a ‘sortabiography’. Whether you are a Monty Python fan or not – Eric was one of the Pythons along with John Cleese et al – the book is a roller coaster read taking us from Eric’s childhood, through to his time at Cambridge University, the birth of the Monty Python gang and the start of a stellar career spanning television, film, musicals, screenplays – the list goes on. You are never far from great tales of mischief making, fall-outs, celebrity shindigs, friendship and love. In fact the stuff of life is packed in there but with far more bells and whistles than most people will ever experience. With the song ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’ played at funerals, weddings, football terraces, graduations and the like, you would expect Eric to have his own tombstone epitaph planned out to the last word. Well he has:
‘Eric Idle See Google.’
As the catch-phrase goes, ‘say no more’.
Over and out…
