Vive la France

Bonjour mes amis, bienvenue en France. Well, what a difference! It was 27 when we arrived, sunny, no rain and a little wind!!! 🌞

However, before we get to that there’s a few other places to fill you in about. After visiting Llandudno in Wales, which we really liked, we spent a couple of days in Conwy – REALLY cute – we highly recommend visiting this corner of Wales if you get a chance. After Conwy we headed to Caernarfon Castle - one of four heritage listed castles from Edward I’s reign, which took 47 years and £25,000 to build. Pretty impressive and again, a very cute town despite the gale force winds! One thing about Wales is the multilingual road signs they have – which can be a bit of a problem as the Welsh comes first and is often a lot longer than the English, so not reading Welsh we kept missing what the signs said – especially when there was more than one place on them!! A woman in Caernarfon gave us some good advice – read from the bottom up!! Huh – seems simple enough – Not! 🤔😵‍💫

 

After a wee pit stop, we headed off to Shrewsbury which we LOVED. Absolutely gorgeous with a really nice feel to it. Staying just a 10 min (£6 uber) ride from downtown, we did a lovely cruise down the River Severn before having a night out on the town. Met an Aussie couple and a few Brits on the way and found 2 for 1 cocktails. Needless to say, I was feeling a little ‘ordinary’ the next day. Despite that we spent the day wandering around town – fantastic green spaces, quaint architecture – a really liveable city we thought.

 

Then off to Bath we go…. It’s been 23 years since I last visited Bath – at the time I was living in London, working nightshifts and one of my five flatmates had an ex UK postal van that we used for flat trips. I’ll be honest I don’t remember much of that trip as I got home at 8am, jumped in the van, slept in the back for a few hours, then went bar hopping the rest of the day/night. I have vague recollections of visiting the roman baths and seeing a fire eater in the square…. But that’s about it!! So, it was lovely to revisit as an older, more sensible adult 🤣

 

I’d have to say if you were thinking of doing a trip round the UK and wanted to visit all the sites, it’s worth getting a national trust membership. Everything is around £25-30 each to visit (churches, castles, Stonehenge, roman baths etc.) and it’s free if you’re a trust member. I think it’s around £70/year, so you only have to visit three places to get your money’s worth. I wish we’d done that - would have saved us a lot of money!!!  

As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m an historical romance fan, so a visit to the Jane Austen Centre was on my list. Jane spent a few years in Bath and a couple of her books are based here. I left Trap in the pub after the response of “Jane who” – thought I’d save the 17 quid for something else! I really enjoyed the visit – the actors who work there are in costume as one of Jane’s characters and they get right into character – you learn more about her family and life before wandering the museum and then getting into costume – I was told to lift my head and look down my nose to really capture the attitude – I’ll leave you to decide whether I was successful or not. Our campsite in Bath was alongside the River Avon, we had a 5 min walk to the bus (right past a lovely pub on the riverbanks) and then a 15 min trip into town, so really convenient also.

 

We then packed ourselves up and did a big trip down to a club site near Dover, before jumping on the ferry to Calais. On the way we visited the Westbury White Horse which was bigger than I expected, Stonehenge, which was packed and seemed smaller than when I last visited (of course I was about 6 years old and you could touch them then, so….). You can’t get too close to them now - you walk around them in a circle behind ropes. Then the last stop before we jumped on the motorway was Bulford to see the Bulford Kiwi - a large chalk kiwi on the Beacon Hill above the military town of Bulford. Apparently, It was created in 1919 by soldiers of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force who were awaiting repatriation following the end of the First World War. Sling Camp (now gone), part of Bulford Camp, was established in June 1916 for the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF). Soldiers of the NZEF underwent training here when arriving in England before being transferred to New Zealand units serving on the Western Front. After the war was over, the New Zealand soldiers were eager to return home, but no troop ships were available. In the wake of riots by disaffected soldiers, their commanding officers decided that the troops should be kept busy carving an enormous kiwi into the chalk of the hill. This was done in February and March 1919, by the Canterbury and Otago Engineers Battalions. Pretty cool we thought, although it did look more like a chicken now!!!

So off to France we go. We looked at the chunnel, but it was more than twice the price for the motorhome & us and our trip was only 1.5 hrs. Plus we got to see the White Cliffs of Dover on our way out.  Arriving in Calais we did a short jump down to Merlimont (really just a way station). The site had a lovely pool, which we were thankful for as we’d gone from 15 to 27 degrees in a couple of hours! However, it wasn’t really set up for tourers with no water to refill our tank (so we conserved water by drinking beer and wine) or anywhere to get rid of our grey water.

 

We’ve now landed in Paris where we are staying at a site on the east side. In true Parisien style, the toilets are smaller than a cupboard and shower cubicles not much bigger. And just because we’re never satisfied, we’re now complaining about the heat!!! 36 degrees today and very little wind…. 🥵

 

Off to the Latin Parisien Dinner & Show tonight and then we’ll get a little sightseeing in tomorrow.

 

À bientôt.

J&T xx