SUMMARY

FRANCE

Good things: campsites (generally); quality of driving (no, really – few motorway pileups); lots of countryside; goats cheese (in moderation); friendly people (always eager to help if you’re in difficulty); good roads; quality, variety and price of wine, beer and champagne; pretty villages; upkeep of public areas; quality of road signs (very consistent); bread and croissants; local produce / markets; litter free; space; tree-lined avenues;

Bad things: cars staying 1cm from your tail end whilst they’re waiting to overtake; those toilets – what the hell are they all about?; can’t get Radio 4 (wait a minute – shouldn’t that be under good things?); road camber – many a time I’ve gritted my teeth and clenched my buttock cheeks as we crept around a roundabout, three tons on two little outside tyres, and the road dropping away from us;

Best overnight stop: Bernay camp municipale and Medis and the first France Passion, wherever that was and Revin

Worst overnight stop: None

Good things: the van; Green Flag backup; Annie (of course!); the TomTom (Catherine) – marriage saver; meeting Norman and Sandra at Bernay;

Bad things: flat tyres, gas leaks; short grey water outlet hoses; rain; the TomTom mounting bracket;

Things we might improve, if we ever got round to doing them, which is quite unlikely: having a smaller water fill hose, so we don’t have to unwind 20m of the stuff if we’re 2 feet away from the tap; add a length of hose to the grey water outlet, so we can empty where the hell we liked; Radio 4 / World Service (anything English) for Annie; get France Passion to provide GPS coordinates; move the driver’s seat over to the left a bit; and all those other improvements I’ve written down on bits of paper and which have by now been thrown away.