From NW of Les Houches on the N205 approaching the biggest mountain in Europe.
Well, apart from Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus mountains in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia, (Russia).
From NW of Les Houches on the N205 approaching the biggest mountain in Europe.
Well, apart from Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus mountains in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia, (Russia).
If not the world, then Europe's your oyster (mushroom).
We spent only a very short time in some of these countries, but our route took us to
France, Belgium, France, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Belgium and France.
Right-minded person that you are, you'll be thinking that in such a short time that's a lot of mileage (2,794). We have to agree, but add
in our defence that we don't do many trips like this and there is much about our lifestyle which ensures our carbon footprint is relatively small.
Day One: Home - Dover-Dunkerque - Maubeuge, 474 miles
Until Day Two, Day One always seems so important, doesn't it.
The Channel Crossing
At an average speed of 62mph and a fabulous 37.5mpg we arrived in Dover within six hours. Shortly after 2pm we started on the, let's face it, tedious two hours to Dunkerque. I don't doubt that Eurotunnel provides a very much greener (less brown), Channel crossing, but for a van like ours the rail route appears to be more than three times more expensive. The world will make much more sense when carbon rationing has been brought in, I'm sure of that. In the meantime, I guess the right thing to do would be to give to The Woodland Trust, or similar, a proportionate amount of the difference in cost between the two types of crossing.
Jo, for her first time ever, had booked our channel crossings and she'd done it on-line with Norfolkline. In her innocence(?) she'd entered our campervan as a car (quite correctly, I suggest, it being less than 5m long and less that 2.4m high), and because of our low roof the total out and back cost was only £43. At no time at either port did any of the staff query our van's category or dimensions.
The Navigating
To add to our excitement, convenience, safety and relaxation, I'd recently bought (for £202 on-line from Dixon's), Tom Tom One Europe. It's advertised as "entry level" sat nav (probably because it doesn't have extra gimmicks which we don't need). It isn't faultless and it does require some interpretation, but it seems to me that overall it really is only a little way short of absolutely wonderful.
Perhaps better and less expensive devices can be bought (I notice that viamichelin do what looks like a good system too), but coverage of the UK and of all (not just main) roads in Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the Vatican impresses me greatly.
The first serious job for "our Thomas" was to take us into Belgium, along the border then back in France, to Camping Municipal du Clair de Lune at Maubeuge, described as "useful for those heading to and from eastern France". And it's open all year. Un Clair de Lune a Maubeuge is a song written in 1962 (and a look at the lyrics may leave you no wiser). About 6pm as we were arriving at the site the full moon was shining brightly. 10 hours of travelling is more than enough for one day, even in the wondervan.
Only one month earlier I'd had no experience of sat nav, but then I'd driven a gang down to Birmingham to see Massive Attack at the (don't mention the brand), Academy. Dan the Man's Tom Tom had so effectively guided us in and out of the concreteness of Brum that I was very soon convinced that some sort of sat nav was going to be an enormous help in getting us quickly and easily from Chamonix to Amsterdam, IF such an improbable pairing of venues might be achieved in one short holiday.
(and €66 on autoroute tolls)
I'm thinking that perhaps there's something crusader-ish in the look of the van newly arrived in mainland Europe and showing it's apparent allegiance to the colours.
I like this shot. A lot. And I keep coming back to it. It seems to be saying, "Travelling in Europe is what it's all about" Of course, an old hippy van could've said, "Where it's at, man", but such wording doesn't sound authentic when it's coming out of a modern five cylinder diesel engine. |
Of the four vans leaving the site that
sunny morning ours, not unusually, was the last. In daylight we saw that
this area had the look of France in an English
schoolchild's old fashioned textbook. Slender detached houses at the roadside might have fitted very well
along a branch line of our Great Western Railway.
At first it was an elderly toll-free autoroute which carried us south between defensive structures left over from miserable world wars. Once the tedium of crossing the "prairie" fields was briefly broken when we were delighted to see a red deer grazing amongst sprouting crops. Mistletoe grew in abundance, blackthorn was in bloom and catkins and pussy willow mocked the wintry climate, but not as fiercely as the indication of 20ºC which by mid afternoon shone from our dashboard. And we didn't cross one river valley which wasn't impressively flooded. Have I imagined that that afternoon we passed through a hamlet called La Femme Sans Tête? |
I can't
find such a name on viamichelin, but 20km from Maubeuge is a hamlet
called La Tête Noire. Perhaps in the morning I had
seen, without noticing, a road sign to La Tête
Noire and spent half a day making mental chewing gum of it? An
unsatisfactory explanation and I remain
mystified. And how could 10 satellites be more accurate than a VW's speedometer!? I'd set cruise control at 132kph, but Tom Tom showed 126 (127 on long uphills). We kept to that speed and to my shame our mpg dropped to a dismal 29. And stayed there. Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, what would they have thought of sat nav? Although I'm sure there should be, is there ever nothing to think about?
You might be wondering why we were close to Nantua, but after heading for Chamonix all day long we'd become tired of autorouting so, on a whimsical shortcut which turned out to be longer, we were aiming towards where Jo had found a couple of open-all-year campsites not too far from Annecy. And anyway, since when was sticking to the plan an important part of campervanning? |
At times we wondered whether or not we were seeing more British registered vehicles than we'd ever seen on summertime trips. Perhaps it was only proportionately more, but there were large numbers of them, mostly SUVs and most of them, it seemed, without passengers.
Swooping into the outskirts of Annecy. We'd been looking out for it and about 2pm had seen our first snow. I'd assumed then that it was on the mountains of the Jura range, but it was far beyond. Here in fact! The big central one is la Tournette, 2351m, southeast of Annecy.
Les Dents de Lanfons and evening traffic on the dusky road to
Thones.
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In case you were wondering, this and the shot above were taken in
conditions of effectively no light. The staff at Camping de l'Escale at Le Grand Bornand were very friendly, but at €32 (with hook-up), they could afford to be friendly. They spoke very good English (such a relief when ones brain is fuddled at the end of a long, long drive), but the plot onto which we were squeezed was significantly boggy and less than a quarter of the size one might expect on a normal campsite in France. I assumed the pitch sizes at Le Grand Bornand had been reduced so as to cater for a glut of snow-tourists, but on a forum here I find that they're like that in summertime too. By French standards that's close to disgraceful! |
We should have felt tired, but with a spring in our step we walked, mostly on hard packed snow, a short way across the valley and into the town. Alongside and below us the white and moonlit river whooshed past. In a pizzeria a local family at a table next to ours ate courses which included a fondue, but also another meal which involved scraping the increasingly sloppy middle out of a full quarter of a cheese suspended on a triangular frame below small electric heaters which were plugged into the mains at sockets built into the DIY furniture.
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As its temperature increased, the smell, not surprisingly, worsened very considerably. It really is true to say that this cheese smelled like dirty old feet. The dirty old feet of a dirty old man. Who is dead.
I thought seriously and repeatedly about walking out. Or being sick. For a while doing both seemed very likely.
And I remembered a vegan friend who'd pointed out that, "Cheese is (only) gone off milk". |
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Evolution? |
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Although it was only a small amount, I was so pleased to see some of Christmas still on display in the town. It didn't seem out of place, or tired, although back home it surely would have done. |
The moon was full and the stars were bright and everything seemed to be well with the world.
So "Catching up on Christmas"? What's all that about? Well, despite the fact that Christmas 2006 really had been our best Christmas ever, since last September I'd been unable to rid myself of a highly impractical thought - that we should come back to Zermatt for Christmas. (It's very likely that this holiday worked out much better than that idea might have done).
