Where's Bertie? To his surprise (and ours) he's back in the Aire at Neufchatel, where he spent a night the Thursday before last.
Weather: Overcast morning, snowy afternoon. Still bitingly cold.
Last night's parking spot was superb, in that the sea provided a perfect background noise, drowning out everything else (including the blustery wind) and lulling me to sleep nicely.
By contrast, today did not go according to plan, which has somewhat scuppered my vague intentions for the next week.
As we drove off this morning the rough intention was to go into Dieppe for some shopping, maybe stay for a few hours, or even overnight, then make our way slowly along the River Bray, stopping at three different Aires en-route - all of which was anticipated to take us around a week.
The one factor that we feared would impact us was the ongoing fuel protests, and it transpired that we weren't being pessimistic.
As we approached the first blockaded roundabout, we u-turned and sought an alternative route. That proved to be difficult so, after a stop to top up Bertie's diesel (the protests have expanded to blocking refineries, so this was a bit of insurance to make sure we have enough fuel to allow us to leave the country) we decided to re-approach the blockaded roundabout from a different direction.
The symbol of this protest is the 'yellow vest' - the high-viz vests that every motorist in France is required to carry by law. Protesters blocking the road are wearing them and supporters of the protests are displaying them on the right hand front corner of their dashboards. There is clearly a lot of support.
For fear of causing offence I didn't take any photos at the first roundabout, where fires were burning both on the island itself and in the middle of every approach road and where dozens and dozens of high-viz-clad protesters were standing in the road, manning the barriers being used to hold the traffic. We chatted to various of the protesters as they held us at three different points on the roundabout (I say 'chatted' - we conversed as best we could with my level of French).
The next roundabout had fewer protesters, but bigger fires. I snuck a photo of this one as we approached:
Bertie had to squeeze between the green lorry and the charred tree, over by the big fire
A lorry was being used to block our exit, but the protesters were directing motorists to mount the kerb onto the grass to bypass the lorry, which is what we found ourselves having to do too. That one struck us as a bizarre form of protest.
By this point we had decided to abandon all hopes of getting to a supermarket in Dieppe, which caused us a bit of a problem as, being a week since we last shopped, supplies were low enough to dictate that we really did need to restock. Thus, instead of spending a week travelling up the Bray, we came all the way to Neufchatel today - although not without one more protest encounter en-route. At a small roundabout in a small town the tell-tale fires were missing, but traffic was being held in its entirety for five minutes at a time before a few cars from each approach road were allowed through in turn. We were the best part of an hour there, shuffling forward a few car lengths at a time.
At that point we were picturing a whole day being spent on the road, to travel a total of 40km, but once we were finally through that place, it was plain sailing to Neufchatel, where Lidl was our first port of call. The huge hypermarche next door came next when we found Lidl looking like a plague of locusts had been through it. I guess Lidl depends on daily deliveries, which have probably been delayed by all the fuel protests.
It was whilst we were shopping that the snow started gently to fall and a couple of hours later it was still going. Very light and with no threat of settling, but added to the bitter windchill, I was somewhat unenthusiastic when we layered up to get a bit of exercise this afternoon. It wasn't so bad once we were moving, but I was still happy to be back in a warm Bertie.
Beyond thinking that we will stay here for a couple or three days (there's electricity and internet here - a bonus when it's hovering around freezing outside without a hint of sunshine), we need to come up with some new thoughts as to where we want to go next, taking into account the lack of Aires on the direct route to where we need to be in 2 weeks time.
(Incidentally, in amongst all of the protests we have seen not a single police person. An intentional decision on the basis that implementation of the law will cause an escalation to riots? Whilst the majority of the protests seem to be peaceful, as of last night there was a casualty list of 400 injured and 1 dead - from what I've read, all of them protesters hit by cars.)
Weather: Overcast morning, snowy afternoon. Still bitingly cold.
Last night's parking spot was superb, in that the sea provided a perfect background noise, drowning out everything else (including the blustery wind) and lulling me to sleep nicely.
By contrast, today did not go according to plan, which has somewhat scuppered my vague intentions for the next week.
As we drove off this morning the rough intention was to go into Dieppe for some shopping, maybe stay for a few hours, or even overnight, then make our way slowly along the River Bray, stopping at three different Aires en-route - all of which was anticipated to take us around a week.
The one factor that we feared would impact us was the ongoing fuel protests, and it transpired that we weren't being pessimistic.
As we approached the first blockaded roundabout, we u-turned and sought an alternative route. That proved to be difficult so, after a stop to top up Bertie's diesel (the protests have expanded to blocking refineries, so this was a bit of insurance to make sure we have enough fuel to allow us to leave the country) we decided to re-approach the blockaded roundabout from a different direction.
The symbol of this protest is the 'yellow vest' - the high-viz vests that every motorist in France is required to carry by law. Protesters blocking the road are wearing them and supporters of the protests are displaying them on the right hand front corner of their dashboards. There is clearly a lot of support.
For fear of causing offence I didn't take any photos at the first roundabout, where fires were burning both on the island itself and in the middle of every approach road and where dozens and dozens of high-viz-clad protesters were standing in the road, manning the barriers being used to hold the traffic. We chatted to various of the protesters as they held us at three different points on the roundabout (I say 'chatted' - we conversed as best we could with my level of French).
The next roundabout had fewer protesters, but bigger fires. I snuck a photo of this one as we approached:
Bertie had to squeeze between the green lorry and the charred tree, over by the big fire
A lorry was being used to block our exit, but the protesters were directing motorists to mount the kerb onto the grass to bypass the lorry, which is what we found ourselves having to do too. That one struck us as a bizarre form of protest.
By this point we had decided to abandon all hopes of getting to a supermarket in Dieppe, which caused us a bit of a problem as, being a week since we last shopped, supplies were low enough to dictate that we really did need to restock. Thus, instead of spending a week travelling up the Bray, we came all the way to Neufchatel today - although not without one more protest encounter en-route. At a small roundabout in a small town the tell-tale fires were missing, but traffic was being held in its entirety for five minutes at a time before a few cars from each approach road were allowed through in turn. We were the best part of an hour there, shuffling forward a few car lengths at a time.
At that point we were picturing a whole day being spent on the road, to travel a total of 40km, but once we were finally through that place, it was plain sailing to Neufchatel, where Lidl was our first port of call. The huge hypermarche next door came next when we found Lidl looking like a plague of locusts had been through it. I guess Lidl depends on daily deliveries, which have probably been delayed by all the fuel protests.
It was whilst we were shopping that the snow started gently to fall and a couple of hours later it was still going. Very light and with no threat of settling, but added to the bitter windchill, I was somewhat unenthusiastic when we layered up to get a bit of exercise this afternoon. It wasn't so bad once we were moving, but I was still happy to be back in a warm Bertie.
Beyond thinking that we will stay here for a couple or three days (there's electricity and internet here - a bonus when it's hovering around freezing outside without a hint of sunshine), we need to come up with some new thoughts as to where we want to go next, taking into account the lack of Aires on the direct route to where we need to be in 2 weeks time.
(Incidentally, in amongst all of the protests we have seen not a single police person. An intentional decision on the basis that implementation of the law will cause an escalation to riots? Whilst the majority of the protests seem to be peaceful, as of last night there was a casualty list of 400 injured and 1 dead - from what I've read, all of them protesters hit by cars.)
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