Wednesday 18 September - Wissant

Where's Bertie He's in the Aire at Wissant where he has been many times before.
Weather: Misty start, slowly clearing to sunshine. Warm, but breezy.

Our day started, as promised yesterday, with a run/walk over to the next village: Gerberoy. A pleasant route, through woods, up and over an undulation in the landscape.

Snaps of Gerberoy, and the wooded route to get there.

A nice little place and very quiet early in the morning.

Back at Bertie for showers and second breakfast, before we packed away and pointed Bertie's nose towards the UK.

There's nothing interesting to report from the drive. We stopped in a car park in Wailly Beaucamp for lunch, and whilst I prepared the food, Mick nipped up the road to the patisserie:

I ate most of my half before thinking to take a snap, but Mick was more restrained.

Next up was a series of stops in Boulogne. First a petrol station for LPG, but they had run out, so we made do with buying some diesel instead (€1.53/litre), then Lidl for one of those 'Brits in France' shopping excursions. The till operator said something to me that I didn't catch, but it may well have been "You must be throwing a cheese and wine party!". 14 bottles of wine, 12 bottles of beer and four pieces of cheese for less than £48.

Next stop was another petrol station for LPG (33 litres at 97c/litre), before we came on to Wissant.

Here we found that a barrier and payment machines have been installed at the entrance, but the barrier was open and they clearly haven't been commissioned yet. Electricity pillars have also been installed around the Aire. It will be interesting to see how much they start charging. The 45 spaces are almost full at 7pm on a Wednesday in mid-September, but how much will people be prepared to pay for such narrow spaces? Hopefully they'll set it at a reasonable level, as it's such a convenient stop when travelling to and from Calais.

Purely because it would be remiss to be so close to a beach and not set foot on it, we wandered down there just before tea. There we found half a dozen armed Gendarmes standing in a huddle looking at the beach, and a huge number of kite surfers taking advantage of the windy conditions. We didn't see any white cliffs across the water, as it was too hazy. We could barely see the ferries, just up the coast.

Kite surfers a-go-go

Left: today; Right: March 2023. If I troubled myself I could find more photos of this house on my phone from when it was derelict, before its grounds were developed into a housing estate. 

The other cake Mick bought at lunchtime, before I cut it up for sharesies after tea.

Tuesday 7 September - Songeons

Where's Bertie? He's in a free Aire in Songeons. Exact location: 49.545145, 1.854665.
Weather: Overcast morning clearing to sunshine by late afternoon. 22 degrees.

Mick's vote for today's destination was Amiens, which sounded like a really good call, until I spotted that the Aire sits 5km out of the town. Given yesterday's exersions at Disney (and with a migraine) it was potentially going to be a waste to go there only to find a disinclination to do anything active.

Thus we came to Songeons, chosen because it wasn't out of our way, has a free Aire with good reviews in which people told me that it was next to a river and a five minute walk from the town.

I'm can't remember whether I looked to see what the comparison was between toll-roads route and free-roads route, but we took the latter and it felt rather fiddly and slow. It may just be that's the most efficient route from Paris to Songeons.

We were here by lunchtime, and after a delayed elevenses we went out to have a look at the town. That didn't take long, and its nothing remarkable. It was also very quiet, because we excelled once again at hitting the lunchtime closed period.

There's another town nearby (Gerberoy) that's apparently worth seeing, and it's only a 1.5km walk away. I suggested we could nip over there before teatime, but laziness (recovery from yesterday!) won for today.

I think my bruised ribs are probably up to a little joggette in the morning, so I'll combine that with sightseeing before we make the final jump north to return to the UK on Thursday.

The only photo I took today. As free Aires go, this one with its hedge-delimited pitches, is rather nice. Odd location, mind. You take what seems to be a driveway between houses to reach it behind the back gardens of a residential street. 

Monday 16 September - Disneyland Paris

Where was Bertie? He spent the night in the Aire at Disneyland Paris at a cost of €40.
Weather: Sunny intervals, warming up from around 12 degrees to 20 degrees.

I'm going to start by nipping back to 2013, when we celebrated our 10th wedding aniversary with a trip to Florida. Everything was arranged and paid for, including a week at Disney, when Mick suddenly voiced his concern that I would hate Disney World. Too late to worry by then, we went ahead and discovered that I absolutely loved Disney. So much so that we extended our stay there to two weeks.

In 2019, with a significant birthday coming up, we decided to take Mick's boys, their partners, and all of the grandchildren to Disneyland Paris. That was all booked for April 2020 and, obviously, it didn't happen (because Disney was closed, Eurostar wasn't running and even if they were, we were all trapped at home).

So, we'd never been to EuroDisney (as I still think of it), and we were going to find ourselves driving past Paris (not something that happens very often). Thus, last week I booked us some tickets, just for the one park and just for one day.

A relatively early start (away at 0730) saw us arrive at Disney at around 0845, and with just a small delay at the entrance to the Aire (the Italian van in front of us had great problems getting in; we just drove up and the APR system opened the barrier for us) we found ourselves with a choice of around 475 motorhome parking spaces (assuming that the 500-van capacity that I've read is true; it's certainly a huge area). However, around 485 of the spaces are covered with part of the massive Disney solar farm, and we wanted to be out in the sun, which gave us a choice of three spaces. In case I'm being perplexing with the maths, there were about 25 motorhomes already parked up, about 12 of which were in the uncovered area.

The only downside of the outside spaces was that they are at exactly the opposite end of entire car park from the Park's entrance, giving a 1.2km walk.

A long old day was had. We were in the park from when it opened at 0930 until gone 1530, when we escaped back to Bertie for a couple of pots of tea. The intention had been to eat early, then return to the park for the main parade of the day, but once we'd collapsed into Bertie our inclination for the parade waned, as we couldn't see what we were going to find to do in between that finishing and the night show starting. We had already done everything we wanted to do in the park, bar one roller coaster. It turns out that Disneyland Paris is really quite compact, in that the walk between attractions is at most 7 minutes (contrast with Alton Towers, where we went in July, which has less stuff, but is much more spread out), and the queues yesterday were really short for everything we wanted to do bar Big Thunder Mountain (and even that peaked at 45 minutes), so great chunks of the day weren't wasted in queuing.

At quarter past five, I suddenly decided that as this was likely a one-off visit, we really ought to make the most of it, so we sprang into action, power-marched back to the park and got there just as the parade was starting (and fifteen minutes before it reached where we were standing, so we could have been a bit more leisurely). Worth the effort, I declared, as we made the walk back to Bertie for tea.

Our last forkfuls had no sooner been deposited in our mouths than I chivvied us back out the door. The queue for the Big Thunder Mountain roller coaster was being reported as 45 minutes, I didn't want to leave without having a go on it, and I also didn't want to miss the big lightshow that acts as the finale to the day.

Big Thunder Mountain was excellent (and we were off the ride 30 minutes after joining the queue). The Electrical Sky Parade (essentially drones flying in formation, lighting up to create shapes in the sky, but in the dark so you don't see the drones, just the lightshow) was fantastic. The subsequent 'light spectacular' was pretty good too. The huge crush as everyone then tried to exit the park simultaneously wasn't such fun.

Even less fun was the state we'd left Bertie in, with dirty dishes and pans everywhere, but we sorted that out before we finally fell into bed.

A long day, but good value. The tickets had cost us £54 each (they were £60 on the UK Disney site, but by buying in Euros (I chose the Irish site for ease of language) I got a more favourable exchange rate), and the parking was a smidge under £34. Yes, €40 looks expensive on the face of it for just a secure motorhome parking space, but when you consider that the fee is €30 for day-parking for cars, then €40 for a day and a night looks far more reasonable, and it's certainly convenient having a living room and kitchen available on site; I'm not sure we'd have lasted until closing time without that luxury. It was surprisingly quiet overnight too; or maybe it was really noisy and we were just tired!

A few photos, in reverse order, because I'm being too lazy to insert them one by one, and if I select a whole bunch together, it always puts them most recent first:

A small snippet of the Electrical Sky Parade (drone light show), behind the lit-up fairytale castle:

A small snippet of the main parade of the day:

Surreptitiously taking a photo of a jumper I liked in the queue for Buzz Lightyear Lazer Blast. An image search has told me the name of the pattern; I can't find the pattern for sale anywhere, but I reckon I can reverse engineer it:

The maze was tedious (no chance of getting lost; there were so many people in it that you just needed to follow those in front), but the view over the park from the Queen's Castle was good:

Small snippet of a different parade we'd seen earlier in the day:

Taken from a boat ride, looking at Phantom Manor - the best haunted house ride I've ever seen (admittedly, I've only ever done three to the best of my recollection, but this one was excellent):

Big Thunder Mountain, snap taken in the morning, but we didn't go on it until just after sunset:

A parade we didn't watch. We were just passing by:

My most favouritest ride. The incredibly cheesy 'It's a small world':

Happy to be there:

Just a bit of scenery between rides:

Main Street, immediately after entering as the gates opened:

(Just a bit of a postscript, as a thought had whilst putting those photos in. Disneyland Paris isn't a patch on Disney World Florida. That probably goes without saying; one is a small land, the other is a huge world. What I particularly thought was lacking were opportunities to be doing something, but sitting down. In Florida there was more opportunity to take in a show in an auditorium, giving an opportunity to sit down. The only similar thing in the main park in Paris was Mickey's PhilharMagic, which we would have visited had we not accidentally joined an adjacent queue to have our photos taken with some Star Wars character that neither of us knew the name of. We realised the error before we got to the front of the queue, but by then it was 20 minutes until the next Mickey show so we wandered off elsewhere. If we'd bought the two-park ticket, we could have gone to the Studios Park next door where (I think) there's more opportunity to sit and watch a show.)

Sunday 15 September - Provins

Where's Bertie? He's in an Aire in Provins, where it costs €8 for 24 hours. Exact location: 48.562044, 3.279718
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and warm (20 degrees)

We were in no rush to leave Troyes this morning, so it was a leisurely start. Mick took a run along a canal whilst I pottered, then we started getting ready to travel. Possibly because we were in no rush, we achieved readiness with unusual efficiency, and there was no queue at the service point either.

With Aldi being almost next door to the Aire, I could have walked there whilst Mick was out for a run, but instead we made it our first stop. In France it only seems to be the really big supermarkets that have self-service tills. That causes a problem in the smaller shops, as it's common for people to pop in just for a baguette. Being British, we feel obliged to allow someone to go ahead of us if they've only got one or two items (something that we don't often observe the French doing), which means we can be at the till for quite some time if people keep coming along with just a bit of bread. Love them or hate them, self-service tills are really convenient for this scenario.

Quick pitstop completed, onwards to Provins, chosen purely as it was a convenient location for our onward plans (actually, not that convenient, but as convenient as I could find for official motorhome parking, and we didn't want to risk a disturbed night in a random car park tonight). Lots of the reviews on Park4Night said it was expensive just for a patch of car park with a sub-standard service point (one tap shared for drinking water and toilet cassette cleaning). A few reviews even said that the town wasn't even interesting. Our expectations were thus low.

Greeted at the entrance to the car park by two parking attendants, they gave us directions (in rather rapid French) to the motorhome parking, which turns out to be closer to the town than the car parking. We are looking out of Bertie's windscreen at the town walls, which was the first sign of promise that this might be an interesting place.

A couple of minutes walk along the road. Notice the chap in costume.

Looking along les remparts

What we found inside the walls felt like a cross between an open-air museum and a film set. The former was based on the fact that there were a lot of people around (more than we've ever seen in any sort of museum) and they were all clearly tourists.

Town street

We opted not to pay the entrance fee to go into Caesar's Tower.

But we did go into the church

Far brighter and airier than most churches.

Heading out of the mediaeval town, down into the 'new' town we went, although that was mainly half-timbered houses and clearly not very new at all. Through a rather nice park, beyond which an equally nice tree-lined promenade took us back to the ramparts.

The day had warmed up by now and as we climbed up to the top of the wall, then proceeded along it, having to ascend and descend for every tower along the section that was open for public access, we regretted not wearing shorts.

View into the old town from the ramparts (note the artist in the bottom right; there were lots of them dotted around the town, presumably on an organised painting holiday)

Along the wall

Coming back through the town, trouble was had finding an ice cream vendor who hadn't run out of cones. It was third time lucky. Then back to Bertie with me opining that of all the mediaeval towns/villages we've visited on this trip, this one was the best. 

Friday 13 and Saturday 14 September - Troyes

Where's Bertie? He's in an Aire (that is really a campsite) in Troyes at a cost of €15 per night including electricity. Exact location: 48.312185, 4.096685.
Weather: Sunny intervals, Friday 15 degrees, Saturday 17.

Troyes is about 2.5 hours from Étival-Clairefontaine, where we had languished for three nights. We broke that journey up, although not very evenly. After 3 minutes we stocked up at an Aldi. After 20 minutes it was a small detour to a laundrette.

Every time I do laundry, I stand in the middle of Bertie and contemplate what items I have forgotten (because it's seldom just the contents of the laundry bag), and every time (or so it seems) I forget something. Last week it was pyjamas, and if it hadn't been for that, we probably could have got away without doing another wash on this trip. Of course, having made the diversion and needing to pay for the machines, I made the most of it and did a full load (€6.50 for a 6kg wash and a 16 minute dry, so pretty good value).

Then to Troyes. At the time of publication of our Rough Guide to France, this Aire was the municipal campsite (and apparently 5km out of town; I've checked the address, it's definitely the same place). It's now a motorhome Aire and the old reception/toilets/showers/laundry building is closed. The fact that it used to be a campsite is, however, relevant as, to my eyes, it is still a campsite. The pitches, each bordered by hedges, are huge. You could fit 3 Bertie's on ours, and some are even bigger. All very nice; far nicer than we need.

We did nothing out of doors for hours after we arrived here, which was fine by me as it turns out my trip and subsequent sudden and close examination of the pavement in Nancy had more of an impact than just skinning my hands and knees. I can only assume that I landed with my elbow between tarmac and ribs, as my ribs are decidedly bruised. I'm fine as long as I don't breathe deeply, laugh, cough or look over my left shoulder. Despite that discomfort, after tea we decided we'd been indoors too long and took a leg-stretch.

This morning we walked into Troyes. Contrary to the guidebook's '5km out of town' claim, we reached the edge of the old town after just over 1km, and were at the cathedral in 2km. It was still early, and everywhere was quiet as we looked around the cathedral and poked around some of the streets.

Cathedral

So much stained glass

It took a while to work out why they were all left hands

More wandering ensued, greatly enjoying the wonky half-timbered buildings, even though we've seen more than our fair share of half-timbered towns across both Germany and France over the last few years.

Probably not the best framed snaps

We then discovered that it's market day, and around the market the streets were far from quiet. What a huge market it was too, spreading around three sides of the indoor market. We took a walk through the market hall too, and got completely disorientated upon emerging on a different side.

 The range of wares at the market was extensive, from mattresses through dozens of clothes stalls, pans and utensils and the standard French fruit, veg, meat and cheese stands. The only photo I took was of this array of peppers.

Our mission was then to find somewhere for a drink and snack. This is not usually a problem. France has bakeries (with tables) all over the place, except, it seems, in Troyes. In fact, at this point, we'd not spotted a single boulangerie, with tables or otherwise.

That resulted in us seeing much more of the old town, and a bit of the main shopping area, before we settled on a bar in the main square.

Forgot to the take the obligatory snap until after significant progress had been made on the croissant.

We did vaguely contemplate nipping into the Tourist Office to get a map or leaflet, but just continued wandering, reading information signs as we spotted them (all bar one that we found were bilingual).

We'd gone prepared with sandwiches, which we ate in a park, whilst I looked up information on the museums. We likely would have visited one of them, if it hadn't been for the fact that they'd all just closed for lunch themselves.

So, more wandering and reading of signs.

It's certainly an attractive and interesting town for wandering.

 
As we arrived back at the Aire we spotted a table right by the entrace/exit on which there were various leaflets and a pad of tourist maps, complete with all the main sights highlighted and a suggested route around the town. By luck, rather than by design, an inspection told us we had managed to hit most of the sights. 

Mick chatting with a local

I liked these, although it was a shame that the water level was lower than those in the water were designed for.

Fountain of the day

All the horse chestnuts indicating that we have passed from summer into autumn.

Thursday 12 September - Nancy

Where's Bertie? He's in a commercial Aire at a marina on the canal in Nancy where it costs €19.42 per night, including tourist tax. Exact location: 48.692147, 6.193260
Where was Bertie the last two nights? He found himself staying in Étival-Clairefontaine for three nights.
Weather: Tuesday: rainy start, clearly late morning, then raining later.
Wednesday: grey, cold and wet with a high of 13 and a low of 9.
Thursday: Sunny intervals with just a couple of short showers. 15 degrees

First a catch-up: We were only going to stay in Étival-Clairefontaine for one night, but with Tuesday being rainy, and having work to do, and with the Aire having good facilities (including electricity) for the €8 fee, we decided to stay another night.

The only activities, other than staring at computer screens...

multiple screens in my case; I got the big screen out so I could view three different documents at once.

...Mick went out for a run just before the weather cleared up in the morning and I went out just before lunch. Mick's outing was relatively flat, along the local Voie Verte, whereas I opted to visit the Pierre d'Appel viewpoint (an impressive rock outcrop, that I was unable to capture in a photo).

Good view of three valleys.

I went across the bridge onto the pillar the other side, where my knees started to knock completely irrationally as even a specatcular dive wouldn't have sent me over the edge.

We then decided we needed cake for after lunch, so visited the friendly boulanger/pâtissier:

The lemon meringue was particularly good

The intention had then been to leave E-CF yesterday, but with the weather forecast being for heavy rain all day, and with the temperature having collapsed (it was 30 degrees four days prior; by the time we went out for a walk last evening it was 9 degrees!), we decided there was no point travelling a few miles up the road just to sit somewhere when we could stay where we were and take advantage of the electricity. So, we extended our stay again*.

There was another visit to the bakery, which involved us going through the small Wednesday morning market. Would have bought some cheese, except there was so much choice we just couldn't choose. 

The fan heater came in handy, and for the first time on this trip, we broke the duvet out for the night.

We woke up this morning (Thursday) to a temperature of 11 degrees inside. This really has been a sudden plunge into autumn! We caved and dug out our long trousers.

After Mick had been for another run/walk along the Voie Verte...

Misty start over the water

...we were promptly away for the hour-long drive to Nancy, via a supermarket shop on the way. We wanted to arrive here by late morning, firstly so that we would have time to do the town justice and secondly to maximise the chance of one of the 19 spaces at the Aire being free, as I'd read that it usually fills up quite early in the day.

The welcome from the Marina office chap was excellent, giving me a map and explaining exactly what we needed to see in the town. The map also told us there were various audiotours available via the town's website.

So, off into town we went.

Plas Stanislas is quite something!

Fountains of the day

Having visited most of the POIs on the '18th century heritage' route...

...sustenance was needed...

...and whilst waiting for our food to arrive we planned our afternoon, to do the Art Nouveau tour route, via the Musee de l'Ecole de Nancy. Many an Art Deco building was passed and admired, and we stuck our heads through the door of Brasserie Excelsior (kicking ourselves for not thinking to go there for lunch):

I think that lady may also have just been having a gander

We were almost at the Musee when, looking at directions on my phone, I failed to notice a bent over spring coming out of the pavement and went down so hard that I didn't bounce back up. It didn't take Mick too long to realise that I'd disappeared and another chap also came to check I was okay - which I was, even if I'd taken quite a bit of skin off my hands and a little off my knee (those long trousers were a good call today for more than one reason!).

We continued on towards the museum, but when my hands started dripping blood and with my knee throbbing, we abandoned and came back to Bertie. Scraping the grit out of my hands wasn't the most fun I've had on this trip, but hopefully they'll soon stop smarting.

Rather a shame. Having paid more than we usually do for this stopover, I'd wanted to do the place justice, rather than sitting indoors by mid-afternoon feeling sorry for myself. Only myself to blame though (although what was that spring doing there?!).

(*There may have been others, but I can only think of two occasions on this trip when we've stayed somewhere for 3 nights, and both were in places where we arrived and declared the town to be completely uninteresting.)