…… what should have been a quiet night ! Ha!

Soon after we settled down a terrific thunderstorm kicked off. At first, it seemed like it was going to be thunder and lightning only, like one we’d had at home a few days earlier, but then the rain started, followed by the hail. (This would NOT have been a good time to have had to change the gas bottle, so thank fortune that we had had to do it at home!) The battering was horrendous – we couldn’t see the hailstones, but they must have been a fair size. Also, we seemed to be pretty near the centre of the storm, not only because of the almost continuous flashing and crashing, but because the rain and hail came round three times! So it went on till about 3.30 in the morning.

By 7 o’clock you’d think nothing had happened! Warm sunshine had dried everything up and there was no visible sign of damage to either vehicle.

You haven’t seen my roof!

That’s true.

I’m OK; I’m still sellable, so you do not need to worry about that.

Don’t be sarcy!

Sarcy! Moi? You have to ask where I got that from.

….… Our little parking circle was full of cars and people having breakfast from the boot; there were other motorhomes, too. I went to get some croissants and so on for breakfast – the main car park was heaving! People were circling looking for spaces, then giving up and parking on kerbs, against hedges, anywhere. The restaurant was busier than it had been the previous evening (when it had been busy enough) and the staff were working very hard. But I was served with a smile and the usual courtesies, and set off back to Harry and Carol. It was a comparatively long walk and that leg didn’t like it, but we enjoyed our breakfast.

‘back to Harry and Carol’ – I wasn’t there, then.

The breakfast was for Carol, and we sat in Harry to eat it – that’s what I meant.

Tu parles.

The busy-ness, of course, was due to the fact that it was the first Saturday in August, and the start of the great French getaway.

Ja, but fortunately for us the French were all heading south. During the day we saw lots of slow-moving traffic on the other side of the motorway, but our side was flowing well. Of the people who overtook us, many were Brits, Belgians and Dutch returning from a very hot holiday in the south, or in Spain.

This was a long day; we did 549kms, stopping for fuel at Limoges, of course – THEY’ve learnt their lesson about that and eventually finding parking spaces for elevenses (about 12 o’clock) and lunch; at every service area the spaces marked for Motorhomes and Caravans were occupied by cars, so in the end we just stopped for lunch at the side of the exit road from the service area; others were doing the same. As we went along we occasionally saw some MEN with GUNS (boys in blue in UK terms) and wondered whether they would stop us because of the towing, but they took no notice.

(Sexist remark alert! : I don’t like seeing armed police as routine, but if there’s one thing that worries me more than MEN with GUNS, it’s WOMEN with GUNS!  What a dreadful thing to say!)

And as for being stopped, we couldn’t count the number of illegal bike racks we saw, all travelling freely with unreadable number plates.

At Rouen THEY were hoping to find the route THEY took going the other way last time in Sally –

Between the white cliffs and the river, I remember! Nice of you to mention me; Merci, Harry!

Kein Problem! BUT, although SATNAV was set for Darnétal, THEY didn’t find the correct river crossing and by trying to avoid the long diversion as signed, we ended up in that dreadful crawl which is the centre of Rouen.

And this time there weren’t even any Christmas lights to cheer THEM up as we inched forward at between 0 and 3 miles an hour for about twenty minutes.

‘Inched forward’ – as a European, shouldn’t you say ‘centimetered forward’ ?

Dass ist aber Blödsinn! Napoleonic nonsense!

Once over the river we began to move more freely and, as always, after the tunnel, vrrooommm! So we got to the Bosc Mesnil service Area at about 7.45pm and parked up. This is where we spent New Year’s Eve.

Parking wasn’t easy, because of cars in the caravan bays, but we managed and shunted to a  better spot once someone else had moved. The weather was better than Dec 31^st, complete with sunset:

But the lorry park was busy and some wagons had fridges going all night, so it wasn’t quiet! However, we indulged in our classic ‘Lapin Au Van’, prepared at home last week and brought along as a ‘square’ meal (i.e. frozen in a block).

The building work which was going on at Bosc Mesnil in December / January seems to be complete, but we weren’t impressed. You might expect a new building to have automatic doors, not push-pull-collide-with-folk-coming-the-other-way doors. You would expect a new motorway restaurant to offer wi-fi and to stay open well into the evening. We know it had been a busy day, but the loos weren’t as clean as we expected, nor were they at seven in the morning. And I expected the enquiry about wi-fi to be treated to some sort of expression of regret, not ‘pas du tout, Monsieur’. We won’t make a point of going there again, but it is in a good place so we may give it another chance.