Summer Break, 28 July 2024

UPDATE

Stuff all that. Mum fell off the kerb going back to the hotel and has broken her thigh. Possible surgery tomorrow. This is double-plus ungood, please prayers etc. 

Saint-Junien, I Limousin

Another very long day's driving, but rather a pleasant one, if tiring. Nobody seemed to mind our parking where we did, although it was rather brilliantly lit, and we slept well. 

Mum was ready and waiting when I went over for her at about 08:30, and profited from the occasion to dry my hair! We then went back to the motor home for breakfast, which was scrambled eggs and toast and fruit juice, and once we were in line, we set off. I was in front for the first part of the journey, all round the Boulevard Périphérique. Mind you, the only bit of Paris we could see was the Tour Maine-Montparnasse, if that is what it is still called. Sadly, no sign of the Eiffel Tower, and the only sign of the Olympic Games was that you couldn't use the outermost lane, which was reserved for Olympic traffic. 

We then headed south and west, stopping once for coffee, once for lunch, and finally for the SW to have a much-needed break. Mum and I swapped places every time we stopped. When we stopped for lunch, though, we found that the nectarines I'd bought yesterday had mysteriously disappeared, and we can't find them anywhere! Very strange! I know I brought them back to the WoMo in the shopping trolley, but there they aren't! Oh well! 

I always enjoy seeing the old aérotrain test track outside Orléans, especially as it has now been superseded by the LGV running alongside. 

We eventually arrived at the hotel and were a bit worried that we couldn't find anywhere to park, but finally found somewhere not too far for Mum to walk. Her room is lovely and large, and with a proper walk-in shower, as well as a bath for those who are able. 

Once she was settled, we went back to the WoMo and drove the few hundred metres to the campsite, where we got the table and chairs out and Mum and I sat in these shade while the SW used the services. Then we drank rosé spritzes,

and now we are about to eat cold chicken and salad. It is very hot, much too hot to cook! Later, we will take Mum back to the hotel on her mobility scooter. 

Summer Break, 26-27 July 2024

Senlis, Ile-de-France

You might think we are quite mad going off on holiday on the first weekend of the summer holidays and the Paris Olympics! However, we didn't have all that much choice in the matter, as my sister and her partner were going away this week, so we thought we would take my mother on holiday with us. Mum is 96 years old, and not very mobile, so she will be sleeping in hotels, while we are in the motor home. 

We went down to Sussex yesterday morning, and got the motor home all ready. In fact, we slept in it last night, but were up early this morning. Mum's hairdresser was coming at 07:00 (yes, really!) to wash and set her hair prior to the holiday, so she needed to be up at 06:00 to be ready for him. I volunteered to wake her, but when I went over, she was already awake and reading. 

Once the hairdresser had finished, we had had our breakfast (Mum had had some toast earlier) and we were ready to set off shortly after 08:00. The journey was fine as far as the M25, but they are having to build a great many new emergency stopping-places, so it had a speed limit of 50 mph most of the way. And the M20 was also at 50 as lorries were having to be checked in, so the contraflow system was in operation. I, meanwhile, was thinking unprintable thoughts about Brexit and all its works! 

We did get to the Shuttle on time (just), but then there was a huge, huge queue to check in,

and another for passport control. However, we did manage to get a crossing only a few minutes after our booked time, and even had time to make a cup of coffee while waiting to be called though passport control! 

Once we arrived on the other side, we drove straight to Cité Europe and parked up. Lunch was the first order of the day, and then I did a shopping while the others got diesel (reminding myself that I didn't have to buy everything today!) and once that had all been done, we set off. It was my turn to sit in the back of the motorhome, which isn't quite as comfortable as the front, but still quite comfortable enough to fall asleep! 

We arrived here at Senlis about 7:00 pm, and got Mum into her hotel room, which has a lovely walk-in shower/wet room!

Then we decided that we were all tired, so had supper in the hotel - I had a steak and the others had cheeseburgers. And very nice, too. 

We then got Mum settled in her room for the night, and decided, firmly, that our motor home belonged to a guest in the hotel so we could use a quiet corner of their car park. I hope they don't move us on in the night - we did move away from the disabled space we had been using! 

Tomorrow we have another long drive, down to St-Junien in the Limousin, where we shall stay until Friday. 

Site visit

For the past four or five years, the London Power Tunnels have had a site at the corner of our road.  Obviously it is a building site, but we have been able to see, through the various spy-holes, the tunnel boring machines being lowered in and, indeed, returned to the surface again.  There was, at one time, a conveyor belt to take the spoil somewhere, and so on.  Now the site has got a lot quieter, and the Swan Whisperer decided he wanted to see more of it, so he cheekily asked if he could see in the tunnels.

The answer was no, as you have to have special training to go down, but he was offered a site visit, and today he and I, and J from flat 14, all went round.  We were made very welcome.  The first thing, we were taken into their offices - a rented, serviced office from the company next door which is storage and offices (they do have office space on site, but not enough) - and given a briefing on what the London Power Tunnels are all about.  Very much along the lines of this article from the National Grid, which explains about "our" site in particular, but you can link to an overview of the whole project in general.  

After a fairly extensive briefing, we were given PPE - boots, helmets, goggles, reflective jackets and gloves

- and taken on to the site itself.  The tunnels are now finished, and we were able to look down them if we wanted to (no thank you!  I have no head for heights!), and we could see various machines, including a tall blue tower

that is used to lift the cable drums so that the cables can be unwound and fed down the tunnels - they are planning to start that within the next few days, I believe.  The men were incredibly patient, answering all our "What's that for?" questions.  There is a lift that goes down to the tunnel floor at the moment, but when all is finished, there will just be stairs.  One of the men said he used the stairs on principle, but it made his thighs hurt!  You can see a bit of what it must be like from the videos I will link to at the end of this post.  

Finally we were taken up to the top of their pre-fab offices, where they have a roof garden where people can smoke if they wish, and eat their picnic lunches, which had a terrific view over the site, and also over London.

  They had said we were welcome to take photos, but not to post them on social  media, so the ones I'm posting here are those nobody could object to!  

It was fascinating, but, alas, reality called, as I had to go to the dentist!  

Too good to be true?

Usually, when something appears too good to be true, it is!  Not in this case, though.  The other day, I happened to see a post about the Sainsbury's Picnic Pavilion, which is, or perhaps I should say was, a pop-up special from Sainsbury's.  Held in a venue called The Stables in Covent Garden, the blurb said you paid £5.00 - yes, that's right, a fiver - for which you got 90 minutes to have a picnic with the hamper they provided you, containing, so they said, at least £55 worth of food.

So I thought this sounded like fun, although I had no idea what it would be like.  And, you know what? It was brilliant!  We took the Northern Line to Leicester Square, and walked from there - only a few minutes.  It was easy to find, and the receptionist found my name so I didn't have to fish out our ticket.  We had only a few minutes to wait before they told us our table was ready.  I hadn't booked chairs (the normal seating is cushions on the floor around a low table), but they offered us them when we arrived, so I thankfully said yes please.  There was a bottle of sparkling lemonade on the table, and the waitress bought us a bottle of Sangria and one of a raspberry daiquiri mocktail.  There was a box with wooden plates and cutlery, cardboard tumblers with paper straws, and nibbles of garlic and rosemary twists, foccacias (those dried crouton-type ones) and crisps.  Then there was a proper hamper filled with two Scotch eggs, two boxes of "dinky" feta and tomato puffs (which we agreed would be much nicer hot), a huge pork pie, feta with garlic and parsley, two different salads, tzatziki, olives, hummus, fruit salad and lemon meringue nibbly things.  All this for a fiver!

Needless to say, we didn't eat all of it, contenting ourselves with the Scotch eggs, a couple of the tomato puffs, the feta with garlic and parsley, some of the tzatziki and most of the fruit salad, a couple of the garlic twisty things and most of the raspberry daiquiri.

Well, that would have been enough on its own - but the best bit was, you got to keep the hamper AND such of its contents as you hadn't eaten, to take home!  And on the way out they produced a coolpack to go in the hamper, and an ice lolly - I had coconut and lime and the Swan Whisperer had chocolate and raspberry.  I mean, talk about AMAZING value!  Pork pie and salad for supper tonight (we had not eaten lunch to be suitably hungry for 14:45, and as we didn't stuff ourselves, we should be hungry again).

After this, we walked down through Covent Garden and past Charing Cross Station to pick up a bus on Whitehall.  We had just missed a 159, but an 88 came along almost at once, and we took that as far as Stockwell, when we changed on to a P5, and so home.  My new smartwatch boringly took ages to find the satellites, which isn't too surprising in an area like Seven Dials, but my new sandals are now worn in and as blissfully comfortable as the old ones!  

Dinosaur hunting

 Many years ago now, we took the Boy to Crystal Palace Park to look for dinosaurs.  Today, we took his brother.  Boy2 is 10 now, much older than his brother was when we went.  We had planned to catch a train from Brixton to Penge East, and then come home on the no 3 bus, but when we got to Brixton Station, the train said "Delayed", and the one on the opposite platform didn't seem to be going anywhere.  Citymapper told us that there was a big problem at Victoria with trespassers on the line, which had closed it to all traffic in and out of the area, and was not expected to reopen until 11:30.  It was now about 10:30, so we got a refund on Boy2's ticket and went on the no 3 bus, after all.

In many ways, this was a good idea, as the park slopes very steeply downhill from there, and if we'd gone the other way round, we would have had a great deal of uphill walking, which might be very good for me, but I do not enjoy.  

So we caught the bus and in due course arrived at Crystal Palace bus terminus.  We walked down through the park, passing various sphinxes en route.

 We would have liked to have visited the farm they keep there, but it appears to be part of a college now and no longer open to the public, as far as we could tell.  But it was not far from there until the first of the dinosaurs appeared, and we had a lovely walk down the lakes looking at them all (most photos on Facebook).  They aren't actually all dinosaurs - some are extinct mammals.  It was fun looking at the images on the placards we passed, showing how the Victorians thought the various animals might have looked, and how we now think they looked.  

Then we walked on past the café, and out of the park to Penge East station, which has a lovely waiting-room with a free library and piano!  We didn't have long to wait for our train, and then back to Brixton and lunch in Mama Lan!  

Late Spring Holiday 2024; Monday 20 May

 Home.

We got up relatively early, and were away by 09:30.  First port of call was Carrefour in Cité Europe, which was open, despite it's being a public holiday in France (I had checked!), where I did a bit of shopping - not too much, as time was getting on.

We got a crossing 30 minutes earlier than scheduled, and, despite hold-ups on the motorway, arrived at No 6 at about 13:15, and shared our lunch with my mother, and spent a very pleasant afternoon with her while unloading the WoMo and getting it ready for storage, although we'll have to take it to the dealers very soon as the skylight that doesn't open does leak!

We left Sussex at about 17:10, and got home two hours later - we had to take a slight diversion due to road closures on the A217, but were not badly held up, and enjoyed the sight of Clapham Common on a sunny evening being absolutely rammed with people - bring your own grass!

Then all the boringness of unpacking and putting things away, but it was done at last!  I didn't take any photos, so here is one I took earlier in the holiday. 

Late spring holiday 2024; Sunday 19 May

Marck, Pas-de-Calais, France

We have been in four different countries today! After using the services, and I did a qi gong workout as I was stiff, we left Düren at about 09:30, and it wasn't long before we had crossed the German border into the Netherlands, and some time later we stopped, I think in Belgium, for the SW to have coffee, and I walked up to the shop (it was a proper service area, not just a rest area) and back to stretch my legs. Not that I bought anything, but just a nice bit of exercise.

It is always a long, dreary drive across Belgium, especially when it's raining, which it was - not heavily, but mizzling. By the time we stopped for lunch, though, we were not all that far from Oostende, and just before the E40 turns South towards Calais, the sun came out, and it wasn't long before we were in France, and then only half an hour more to this aire in Marck, where we started off on the first night. It is a very nice aire,

although small, and especially in demand just now while the big one in Calais is being refurbished, hopefully reopening next month. We did get a space (obviously), although not on the side with electricity. The Swan Whisperer went for a walk, but I have had a lazy afternoon doing not very much! Delightful. 

And tomorrow we will be home. I wish we were just setting out.....