The Stowaway Panda

Saturday 13th September 2014

France

 

Today is the first day of our first proper overseas trip in George. By that I mean we had to get a ferry here, drive on the other side of the road, and the people don't speak English. Even the barman on the ferry claimed not to speak English, which I was surprised by.

 

We got up this morning feeling a bit worse for wear, having spent the previous day in Oxford at my sister's wedding. It was a lovely day, but I decided beforehand not to blog about the wedding as I will inevitably offend someone, or forget something important that should have been mentioned, or write about something that should have been left unsaid.

We came away with invitations to London (to visit my cousin, eat, drink, and see the sights), the Cairngorms (to visit my cousin and climb mountains), and Bergen in Norway (to make dandelion wine with some people we'd never met before); and with a stowaway panda on board. His name is Chris Bear and he will be appearing in the blog and may even write one himself during the trip.

 

I had managed to overlook the fact that we'd have to spend some time on the M25 getting from Oxford to Dover. As usual it was like a car park but it only added about half an hour to our journey and we got to the port in plenty of time. So early in fact that the customs officials (who have now subcontracted their vehicle searching operation to G4S) decided there was ample time to divert George into the search bay.

 

The search and accompanying conversation went a bit like this:

G4S - Have you got anything on board you shouldn't have?

Me - No

G4S - Any knives, guns or mines?

Me - Yes

G4S - **PANIC STRICKEN LOOK then spots cutlery drawer** Oh, you mean kitchen knives.

Me - Yes

G4S - So no folding knives or flick knives, or CS or pepper spray on board then

Me - No

G4S - **pokes head through sliding door, fails to spot stowaway panda** That's fine then, have a good trip

Me - **opens mouth to make sarcastic comment and give feedback on search**

Claire - **elbows me in the ribs**

Me - Thanks then, bye.

 

I have since found that in addition to the stowaway panda, I also had a folding lock knife in my camping rucksack...

 

The ferry journey seemed quite short and before we knew it we were in Calais. My fears about driving on the other side of the road were soon quashed as we made it out of Calais with no problems. We drove far enough away from the Sangette immigration detention centre not to have to worry about finding anyone clinging to the bottom of George in the morning, and stopped at a campsite in a little town called Ambleteuse at about 8pm French time.

 

The campsite warden spoke marginally more English than we do French, but we managed to get booked in, and even managed to get shower tokens once I remembered that douche is French for shower and not an insult.

 

I've spent what's left of the evening tidying George up (we'd thrown everything in him in a bit of a rush when we left home) and blogging, whilst Claire has been writing important French words in a smart black notebook. She was also talking about writing droit and gauche on her hands, but maybe she's going to wait until after her shower for that.

 

Tomorrow we are going to try not to sleep in for too long as we need to visit the supermarche to stock up on croissants, baguettes, wine and cheap diesel. Then we're going to visit the Normandy beaches before heading down the coast in the general direction of South.

 

Posted with Blogsy