France (1)

Left London’s, down the M20’s to Dover’s, took the ferry’s to Calais’s.

On rejoining the truck on the car deck, surrounded by dad-like plastic motorhomes, we found a grey-haired fellow hugging the back of the truck. This was our first meeting with Patrick and Sheila from Donegal. Both retired now and in their pensionable years, they have been overlanding Europe and North Africa for the past 16 years in their tweed-lined Mercedes van.


		Having no stop-over planned for the other side of the channel we quickly picked up their tail and followed them to a car park on the Calais marina. We suppered on bread and jam, and tea and stories, long into the night. Realising how lovely Patrick and Sheila were, and how much they knew about travel in Europe and Morocco, we followed up an invite to stay with them at their new home near *Antille*.

				The truck also needed a little tweaking. One major tweak was a leaky front wheel oil seal. This was mainly due to the fact that we hadn’t tightened the bolts around the housing at the last service. OK, not a major problem, unless you drove through Wrenbury ford, filling the gear housing with water! Patrick was full of advice on wild camping and avoiding Toll roads, and so has helped us thus far to save lots of cash.

	Pretty uneventful trip down to Fontainebleau, and we have been able to connect sporadically to e-mail by parking outside Mercure Hotels using ‘BT openzone’ and the like.

	Parked up in Bas de Cuvier car park at Fontainebleau forest where there was an awful lot of coming and going, going on during the night. In the morning we noticed that there was probably more coming going on, than going, going on. It was definitely a big dogging site. Actually, Jools thinks that it was more like Brokeback Mountain, just without the fishing. The climbing was fantastic and we have been moving around from place to place within the forest looking for more climbing and less dogging. Delving heavily into the medical kit already, we managed a placebo test with Brufen the other day as Jools gave me two Buscopan tablets by mistake. Note to self: I must explain to Jools what the mountain of drugs are actually for.



	Had a very interesting visit to *Milly-de-floret*, a small market town and the final resting place of Jean Cocteau. Any one interested in ‘Da Vinci Code’ like tales should check it out.

Got Jools some prescription shades and a second pair of glasses for less than half we would pay in the UK. Kerching! Cash Back!

French food is the bollocks. We’re dining on oysters, scallops, tuna steaks, artichokes, chanterelle mushrooms, brie and truffle pate, and we haven’t even been to a restaurant yet.