Please, if you’re thinking of buying a campervan, RV, or motorhome, then learn from our mistakes first. Because I know it doesn’t sound possible, even for us, but on day one of our wonderful adventure…….. we lose our RV, Georgie. How does this even happen? Well, knowing nothing of what is to come, we set off from Sevenoaks for the coast…
Our first job is to empty all the waste tanks and dump all the water, but hold on to enough fuel to get us across to France. We plan to get an accurate weight for Georgie on the way to Newhaven, and then we’ll stock up accordingly afterwards. We also empty the snotty fridge, because we now have the part to fix it (and this seems the perfect time to melt the iceberg at the top that is reaching ridiculous proportions).
We’ve already booked a place at a campsite so we can get the stupid-o’clock ferry to Dieppe. But when we arrive, we’re told the gates won’t unlock early enough for us to leave in the morning. The wardens suggests a pub car park up on Beachy Head. Now, it’s already been a long day, we’ve had very little food or drink, and the weighing took much longer than expected. But we do as they advise, and drive up to the dark and foggy cliff-top.
If you park overnight at a pub, it is good manners to have your food and drink there. Well, we have a drink or two, and then our dinner order gets forgotten, so I am utterly smashed by the time it I get to eat. They let us fill a couple of bottles with water, but there’s nowhere for us to fill the tank. Never mind, I think, it will do until we get to France. I never sleep well if I’ve had too much to drink, so I wake early and wait for Beachy Head to get less creepy. Figure maybe I can nap on the boat.
Finally, after years of wishing, and months of planning, we drive away from our old life in England to who-knows-what abroad. Despite some interesting scraping noises from Georgie’s back end, we successfully park on the ferry. We have a surprisingly good breakfast and plenty of coffee, and then we start to get very excited. However, just before we disembark, I have a wobbly moment about the thought of driving on the right hand side of the road (never done it before). I have a little chat with Life, the Universe and Everything: –
‘Thank you for this amazing opportunity,’ I say. ‘I am so grateful. I promise to use this time to find my purpose, to fill my potential, and to be the best Bev I can be. I am open to all that you send me that will help me achieve this. I am open to all learning opportunities. And I thank you in advance for all of this.’
This turns out to be a big mistake – huge, in fact – because I think someone was listening.
Now, just a bit of background here: everyone we’ve met, at every campsite so far, has said not to bother booking anywhere to camp: that it is a waste of time. That there are so many Aires and campsites, and you just pull into one that takes your fancy.
And I don’t want to imply that they’re liars (though they clearly are), but we can’t find one anywhere. Not on the route we take from Dieppe, low on diesel for Georgie, and with hardly any water, or anywhere else for that matter.
We’d decide to head for Rouen as neither of us has seen it, and it sounds pretty, but not too big. One of our maps has a tent symbol just before Rouen, and our intention is to check out that campsite first. If we don’t like it, we can carry on to two others in the forest to the left of the town.
The drive down is lovely: bright sunshine after the fog of the British coast, long fields, gorgeous little houses in sweet little villages, and hardly any traffic on clear, straight roads. I begin to enjoy the driving, feeling foolish for having worried so much. I conclude that a left-hand drive car is so much easier to handle in France (not like the day before when I’d totalled a bollard outside Tunbridge Wells).
Steve wants to avoid the toll roads and motorways, as we’re not feeling up for that kind of intensive driving yet. Nor do we know how much everything is going to cost, and we want to be careful with our money. The roads are great – an N road stands for a Nice Road, I think, and a D road is Damn Good also.
We reach Rouen and attempt to find the campsite: Steve uses the Google-map girl (he calls her Deirdre) to give him directions. I follow behind in Nibbles, and am quite surprised to see him ignoring signs that warn of a low bridge coming up. We’ve measured Georgie just the other day, and I’m sure she came out at 3.55m, and this bridge is only 3.5m. Perhaps I’m mistaken – my memory is shocking these days.
But I’ve had this chat with Life, The Universe, etc., and so I’m concentrating on being my best Bev. No more stressing about Steve deviating from the agreed route, no more panicking about whether to follow him down the wrong road, or risk losing him by going the right way. Just chilling. And trusting. Because perhaps he knows something I’ve missed?
So I roll (almost literally) with the punches when I have to swerve sharply into a lay-by behind him – he’s spotted the bridge, and thankfully stopped in time. I’m still chilled. He most certainly isn’t. Wants to know why I didn’t warn him (how?). Is very cross. I’m sure he’s over-tired. I have noticed this being one of the stress factors that really affect him since his stroke, so I make allowances for his grumpiness.
He nicks my car to find another route, and I sit in Georgie wishing I had something other than six Pringles and half a glass of water to eat and drink. I’m also trying not to use the loo too often, as our precious water is getting used to flush it.
He comes back with info about where to get petrol, and a brochure of sorts that might help us find the campsite. Then he tells me to stand in the middle of the road, and stop the traffic while he attempts a U-turn in the road (because the other drivers are screeching around the corner). Chilled I may be, but suicidal I am not. I say, ‘No’, which does not help his mood.
So we set off again, and promptly get lost. Steve parks in a bus stop this time, and leaves me in Georgie while he takes Nibbles to find the petrol station. The bus driver who turns up is not impressed – either at my presence, or my terrible attempts to explain why I’m parked there at all. Just as I’ve used up all my French and most of my mime skills, Steve hurtles back, clocks the furious-faced bus driver, chucks my car keys at me, and yells, ‘just drive’. Then he spins off in Georgie, with me struggling to keep up, and the bus driver looking on, pityingly.
We find the petrol station. Brilliant. But it is now five o’clock and they’re packing up, so we have time to get some diesel but not LPG. Merde. We look back at the map and calculate how far we’ll now have to go back the way we came, in order to detour around to the campsite.
And that’s when I notice that there appears to be a closer one – just to the east of Rouen, at a place called Darnetal. I look at how tired Steve is and consider our lack of water. I suggest we go there instead.
Steve is now so stressed, tired and worried that he just needs to find a lay-by and stop. Neither of us know this yet, but it starts to get clear when, instead of driving to Darnetal, he turns off at Mont-St-Aignan, towards the University.
I follow him, utterly bewildered, and start to forget my pact with Life, The Universe, yah-de-yah-de-yah, and get pretty cross. I’ve been up since 3.30. I need a drink, I need to eat, and I need a proper loo. I haven’t had a shower in days. My feet are melted into my shoes, my armpits are rank, and my hair is itching with dirt. I want a shower, and a Pino Grigio, and a big bun. By the time he’s ground to a defeated halt in some weird little enclave of suburban houses, I’m ready to weep. Looks like Guildford, which definitely doesn’t help.
Steve needs a hug, and someone telling him it’s gonna be fine, and making him sit down and rest while this gets sorted out. Instead he gets me (my patience ran out with our last drops of water, not counting the flooding fridge). And I do my best, I really do, but my best is rubbish. Consequently, I say the stupidest thing I’ve ever said.
I say, ‘Let’s leave Georgie here and go and find the campsite in Nibbles. That way you don’t have to rely on Deidre, who is, frankly, a total cow. I can help navigate, we’ll find it easily, and then we’ll come back and get the van once we’ve got the OK from the site.’
I want him to have a break from the strain of trying to turn a very large vehicle around in a tight space again. Honestly, that’s all I’m thinking.
What I should be thinking, however, is: what’s the name of this road we’ve parked on?
So we find the campsite, but it’s so far away and we go wrong so many times trying to follow Deirdre’s terrible instructions that we lose track of where we are. Up and down the same bloody road in Rouen, turning around at lights or roundabouts, over and over. Pitch dark by the time we get there, and it’s hopeless, and on too sharp an incline for Georgie to negotiate anyway.
(The only thing that makes it bearable is Deirdre’s pronunciation of French words. Even if they’re ones we use in English, like ‘president’. Trying to find the ‘Roody Pree-side-unt’ is confusing but funny.)
So we head back towards the University at Mont-St-Aignan again, and pass a tiny shop that’s still open at 10.30 at night. The choice is less … French than I’m expecting: we buy some plastic-looking ham, two stale brioche rolls, a bottle of beer and some milk. This fantasy I’ve had of shopping in local markets, with a basket over my arm, picking up peaches and melons and strawberries, the scent thickening the air, colour and gossip all around me – well …. not so much. Instead I’m in the local, crap, corner shop, with UHT milk and a surly tobacconist. I have to giggle.
But then it stops being funny, because we follow Deirdre’s instructions back the way we came, and we can’t find the road we’ve parked the van on. We go round in circles all over again. For a long time.
The reality of the situation hits me like a brick. We’ve lost our home on the very first day of our great adventure: it’s 34 feet long, 11 feet high, and 8 feet wide and yet we can’t find it.
How would we even explain this to the police? We don’t actually know the name of the road we’ve left it on, or the district, or anything helpful at all.
At this point, I’m distraught. I start apologising to Steve a lot – ‘I’m so stupid, I can’t think what possessed me, how could I have been such a half-wit, I’m so sorry’. And Steve, who is the best guy to have in a crisis, gets his second wind and takes charge. He says, ‘just shut up and give me directions back to the service station – we’ll retrace our steps’. As I fall totally to pieces, Steve becomes my hero again. He is calm and reassuring, and RIGHT!
As we make our way back from the station we see the pavement he’d driven over, and the roundabout he’d nearly demolished taking the corner too wide, etc. And there is Georgie, just where we’d left her.
But we still have nowhere to spend the night, and we’ve had enough of Rouen. We drive south, out of the town, until we can’t drive any longer. Steve lurches into the nearest lay-by, and we fall, exhausted, onto the bed. About three hours later the traffic starts zinging past, with that noise that they make at Brands Hatch. Georgie rocks so much that I nearly fall out of bed. I wake Steve, because I don’t feel safe, and he kindly agrees to drive on.
Climbing into my car I hear a cock crowing – a chanticleer. And once the day dawns, we find a nice municipal sight at Sees, near Alencon. We go back to bed, sleep until noon, and then give each other a big hug.
I tell Steve how I’d made this pact with Life, blah-de-blah, and how I’d said I was ready for opportunities to learn and grow. He looks quite concerned for a moment.
‘Please don’t ever do that again‘, he says.
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