Wednesday 16th September – New Romney, Kent
France here we come 😃.
Our travels are going to take us nearly 5 weeks. First we will be travelling along the Loire
Valley before heading to the coast and turning east going up the Dordogne
Valley, before heading home.
We left home later than planned as I was waiting for my new
glasses to arrive at the opticians. When I finally got the call, it wasn’t what
I wanted to hear. They weren’t in the consignment. So we had to leave without
them and hopefully we can get them shipped out to one of our campsites.
Just to explain, I had my cataracts removed 11 weeks ago and
I can now see well for reading but have lazy eye muscles (old age!) which give
me double vision at distance, consequently I need special lenses which take
longer to make.
Anyway, we had a good drive down to New Romney where we are
staying before getting the Shuttle tomorrow.
Our first week will be spent with a Wandering Bird group as
we have done before in France and Germany, last year, and Ireland, earlier this
year. We enjoy the company of fellow
motorhomers - it makes a change from just the two of us!!
We met up with Kevin and Liz, who have been on previous
trips, and went for a bar meal in the camp site club house. A quick evening meeting with our leader, Kat,
and then back to Kiwi.
137 miles
What3words - guides.eyelash.newlywed
Thursday 17th September - Le Mesnil-sous-Jumieges, Rouen
It was an early start and we woke up to rain!
A short drive to the tunnel, an easy check in for Rio and
then we were off under the English Channel to France.
Only that’s not what happened!! Half way across, the train stopped and we
were told that there was a track circuit failure ahead of us, and we couldn’t
go on. Apparently there was a chance
that we could move across to the other track.
Just to top this the opticians rang and my glasses are going
to be at least another week. The specialist lenses are going to take longer but
no one really explained that to me properly.
Eventually, down deep under the sea, (250 feet), we started
moving and could feel the train moving across onto the other track as we were
being bumped about. After that it was a smooth ride into France.
An hour late we were greeted in France by rain, not the best
start though the forecast looked better.
We were soon on the road and heading to Carrefour at the
Citie Europe, where we were supposed to meet up with the others. However, there
was a major flaw in the plan. The Citie is huge and no one had said whereabouts
we should meet 😅. We drove into the car park, bashing the
height barrier on our way. But where was everyone? The WhatsApp group was pinging like mad with
lost motorhomes! In the end we decided
to find our way out and head on down towards Rouen after, once again, hitting
the height barrier!
Don’t complain about the price of fuel in the UK, we saw
diesel at £2.39
😳
What with all the above, we got a WhatsApp message from one
of the group, a solo lady, saying she had had an accident and her van wasn’t
drivable.
It turned out that it is going
to take at least 3 weeks to repatriate the van but fortunately her husband,
working in the UK, is going to drive over and rescue her.
We arrived at our site in Le Mesnil-sous-Jumieges in
drizzle. The site is located in a huge
loop of the River Seine, we will explore tomorrow.
Our evening meeting was held in a small marquee which was
just as well as the weather was rather inclement!
While we were having the meeting, I discovered that one of
the group, another solo lady, hadn’t made it across the Channel.
Apparently, as she was leaving New Romney at
7.30am this morning, she went to get her passport out, but it wasn’t
there.
She turned the van upside down
twice and then it dawned on her that it was still at home, in Edinburgh!!
She drove to Gatwick, caught a plane, got
home and there was the offending passport on the table
😫.
She decided to stay the night at home and try to join us tomorrow.
What a day.
Please
can tomorrow be better
🤩
163 miles
What3words - recipient.bubbly.employed
Friday 18th September - Le
Mesnil-sous-Jumieges, Rouen
A disturbed night with Rio deciding that he needed to go out
for a poo at 2am!
Richard was dead to
the
World so Muggins here went out -
thankfully it wasn’t raining.
We had a quiet morning trying to decide where to go, but in
the end we decided to leave Kiwi where she is and explore the locality on foot.
The campsite is situated in the Base de Loisirs Jumieges - Le Mesnil which is an outdoor leisure centre set around a lake offering water sports, a net course, mini-golf, walking trails, and a golf course.
After lunch we went off for a walk, heading towards the
lake. There was a huge green area which had no notices about dogs so we let Rio
run free, he had such fun. There were areas for all sorts of activities from
volleyball courts to exercise areas. We thought that the lake had been a quarry
of some sort and Gem told that it had indeed been a stone and sand quarry which
closed in 1980. There were activities
all over the place but the best had to be the zip wire from high in a tree
across the sandy bay to the other side!!
Rio still didn’t want to swim but was quite happy to paddle
before having the zoomies!
I was
interested in the word zoomies and Gem told me that they were frenetic random
activity periods and that the meaning of frenetic is fast, energetic, and
somewhat wild or uncontrolled. Think of it as a state of frantic activity - yup
that just about sounds it up
🤣
The campsite not only has a few mobile homes but also has
some tent like structures.
We returned to Kiwi finding Liz on the way, so we sat
outside their van with a cuppa which turned into a glass of wine! After a quick stir fry we had our evening
meeting before returning to Kiwi for the rest of the evening.
In Jumieges lies the famous Abbaye de Jumieges, one of the
oldest and most important Benedictine monasteries in Normandy. Victor Hugo famously referred to it as
"the most beautiful ruin in France."
It was founded around 654 AD by Saint Philibert and was a major
spiritual and intellectual centre in Western Europe until its destruction
during the French Revolution. Around 1789, as revolutionary sentiment grew across France,
religious orders were suppressed and monastic property was nationalized. The
Benedictine monks living at Jumièges were forced to evacuate the abbey,
dispersing the religious community that had occupied the site for over a
thousand years. In 1793, the abbey and
its surrounding grounds were confiscated by the revolutionary government and
sold at auction as bien national (national property). It was purchased by a
local timber merchant and speculator named Jean-Baptiste Passouard. To profit from his investment, Passouard
turned the magnificent medieval abbey into an active stone quarry. For more than two decades, workers dismantled
large portions of the structure. High-quality cut stones, marble pillars, and
decorative elements were sold off as building materials. The choir and
the central lantern tower of the great Church of Notre-Dame were intentionally
blown up with gunpowder to easily extract the stone, leaving behind the
open-air void which is seen today.
Nearly three-quarters of the original abbey buildings, including the
complete cloister complex, were destroyed during this period. The
destruction finally ended in 1852 when the Lepel-Cointet family acquired the
property. Inspired by the Romantic movement and writers like Victor Hugo—who
lamented the destruction of France's medieval heritage—the family halted the
quarrying, preserved the remaining towers and nave walls, and laid out the
romantic parkland that surrounds the grand ruins today.
We had visited Jumieges back in 2016 with my sister and
brother-in-law and Penny found these photos.
163 miles
What3words
recipient.bubbly.employed
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