From Guignicourt to Lyon and a grim Wedding Anniversary- 18th Oct ‘19

A travel day. Left Guignicourt at 8.20 in the drizzle. Arrived in Lyon at 4.20 in a thunderstorm that is still raging 5 hours later. Subsequently, the Camping de Lyon campsite resembles one of those WWI battlefields we passed through yesterday! Ironically the weather for the journey was fine - we even saw the sun for a couple of hours!

Everything went well on the journey. We had a couple of Aire stops but because we had our own provisions we had no problems with food. Another surprising fact, a lot of the motorway services cafe / restaurants shut down at 3 o’clock so you ain’t gunna get anything to eat anyway!

At the first one we even managed a picnic!

The thunderstorm has given us a bit of a negative first impression of the site and when I went out in the rain to find the toilets I found an old abandoned toilet block and assumed this was it. This was the moment of reporting my discovery back to HQ!

However it turned out not to be the case but we still have enough of a downer on the place to be looking at aborting our planned second night here! The weather is due to be awful here again tomorrow!

So after the obligatory cup of tea, when things are not going well, we settled down to watch a DVD and wait for a slight gap in the rain. It came for a brief moment but enough for us to get in the car and drive 5 minutes over the motorway bridge to a huge supermarket complex.

We ended up eating at an odd food chain called Flunch! We should have guessed by the name! It‘s how a Little Chef restaurant might have ended up if Lidl (or TK Max!) had taken it over. So we celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary with a crap meal in a French hypermarket with a thunderstorm raging all around us. Thankfully there will be many opportunities to put that right!

Good job I’ve brought the canoe ... I think we might need it tomorrow morning!?

Ferry crossing to Calais and on to Guignicourt- 16th Oct ‘19

Well we were expecting a quiet nights sleep in our farm courtyard in the middle of no-where ... nope that was not what we got! At about 2 in the morning a distressed cow starting mooing and she (I’m afraid it was a lady beast) didn’t stop until we left at 8! I don’t think she was doing it to hack us off so the obvious conclusion was that she was in physical or emotional pain! Either way it pushes you one step closer to veganism - if only butter and cheese weren’t so bloody nice?!

We arrived at the port before 8.45 (90 mins before the sail time) so they put us on the earlier sailing - 9.25. The boat seemed less than half empty so lots of room to spread out. I have to say though the food was bloody disappointing- we were looking forward to some nice fresh croissants or pan au chocolats! No such luck, we didn’t fancy the nasty looking English breakfast so we did without - apart from a lousy humus wrap and a Starbucks - yuck!

The weather was not great but we still managed a quick stroll on deck!

The road we wanted to get to Reims literally was straight off the boat. The campsite was only 2 miles off this road (A26) so it was a fairly easy 150 mile trip. We stopped for a break at an Aire (French motorway service station). Another culinary disappointment as we ended up with a dried up pan au chocolat and an over sweet coffee eclair. I suppose we should have tempered our expectations - you wouldn’t expect much from a pitstop at Watford Gap after all?

The XC60 pulled Brunnehilda very well - although the fuel economy was not anywhere near as good today. Partly to do with the fact our average speed was higher but also because we seemed to be going uphill quite a lot!

We arrived at Camping au Bord de l’Aisne (just north of Reims) at about 3.45pm. https://camping-aisne-picardie.fr/ The site is about 1/10th full. They shut down at the end of October and clearly the busy season was over. The check in lady was very nice - her English was certainly better than our French! We soon got settled. Even quicker than normal as, wait for it... I managed to 90 degree back onto the pitch!!! Blimey, what a result! The most frustrating thing though ... there was no one there to see it! Apart from the current Mrs Pitts who was very complimentary without being patronising - most folks, I’m sure, would have gone the other way on that one?

The wee town is called Guignicourt. It’s a bit run down but very French. The campsite (and town) nestles by the banks of the Aisne - a very big river that lends its name to this whole area of France.
We had a nice walk by the river into town. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aisne

Once in town we managed a trip to Carrefour (aka Tesco’s!!) for provisions. To be fair provisions was mostly 20 bottles (+) of Belgian beer - there was an offer on! We made it into a pizza / kebab place as soon as it opened at 6. Our culinary disastrous day in the home of fine dining continued. They only do pizzas at the weekend and while the kebabs and burgers looked good, it wasn’t exactly the menu of choice for 2 would be veggies. We both ended up with salad and fries. Have to say the fries were bloody good though.

We watched another episode of The Wire on DVD and headed for an early night - cup of tea and reading in bed - #rockandrolllifestyle. Hopefully there are no cows anywhere close tonight? If there are I might just be forced to get a gun and have a steak!!