Bonjour

Bonjour mes amis! After a very smooth ferry crossing, we arrived safely on French soil. We made it onto the correct side of the road, and found our way to our first campsite in Bertangles, about 1.5 hours from Calais. It was a lovely campsite, in the orchard of a chateau, with large plots surrounded by small hedges. However, we learnt our first lesson in the necessity of getting the van level, when Chris almost ended up wearing both the cooking dinner and the water starting to boil in the kettle. (We forgot to mention the incident in England when, on lighting the hob ring, it lit with a "woomph" and singed the hairs half way up her arm! Dangerous pastime, cooking.....) All mental and physical scars were soothed by some beer and wine.

The next day we went for a wander around Amiens, the nearest town. There wasn't a lot to do or see except for a very impressive cathedral, and we managed not to find anywhere with wi-fi! However, it was a nice wee jaunt and on the way back we had our first visit to a Carrefour, where we had to battle the temptation to buy loads due to lack of space! We did also find another shop selling ramps, so we Andy bought a couple so we could level the van - a sound investment!
In the afternoon we went on our first rycle (run (Andy) and cycle (Chris)) - not bad for the first full day away. It was good to get both the legs and bike wheels working especially as Andy hadn't run for a week due to being a bit below full power. With the help of our newly acquired ramps, dinner was cooked without incident!

The next morning we were woken by a nearby cockerel (keep it clean!), and had our first visit to the bakery lady who visits every morning, so happily had breakfast of croissants and pain au chocolat - thank goodness for that rycle! We managed to book our next campsite just south of Honfleur for the Saturday which gave us the full day Friday and the night to relax a little around Bertangles. There was a very vague map in the village that gave supposed walking routes, so with each of us taking photos on our phones of the map we set off on our own routes again Andy running and Chris cycling. Andy's running route was meant to be around 14k, by the time he was done he'd done over ten miles as navigation was interesting and it was pretty darn warm. Chris meanwhile cycled to another Carrefour and we managed to meet back together close to the campsite where a wee bar/cafe had a localish brew (Juliper) that tasted oh so much better after some exercise. Another nice meal cooked up by Chris in the Bongo washed down with some nice wine from the Carrefour and all was well.

Saturday was started by more bakery goodies and off we set to the next site. We chose to avoid toll roads and saw some great wee villages and scenery. We also got a couple of sat-nav special directions (one of which involved us almost losing the top of our van, for no good reason), with Chris looking at the map, looking at the sat-nav, looking at the map saying "...er it seems to be taking us completely the wrong way" which was only partly true in as far as instead of going in a straight line it really likes triangular trips about 5k north... So sat-nav aside and with some more direct instructions from Chris we got to where we were meant to go by around 2pm (through the peeing rain it has to be said) got in, got the van parked up and went for a beer. Even managed to catch the Spurs v Man City game after which the weather cleared nicely :o)

Tomorrow we're probably going to wander into Honfluer, only thing we know for sure is the baguette, croissant and pain au chocolat will be ready for us at 8 in the morning :o)

P.S. As you may have worked out, the campsite near Honfleur has wi-fi! So if you want to send us an email, the next couple of days is a good time.....