Thwack. The black bee hits the windscreen. Although I suppose from its point-of-view, the windscreen hit it. Its frantic struggle to fly away makes me believe it may survive this unfortunate encounter. The leash of insect-insides tethering it to the windscreen makes me believe it probably won’t.
Most French camping-grounds don’t open until April, many even later. So although our destination is the D-Day beaches, the need to recharge essential items (laptop, sat-nav, mp3 player, phones) convinces us to take a detour via Rouen, and a camp-site we know is open in Les Andelys.
We drive into the ancient city of Rouen’s medieval quarter; picture a fat rat running a narrow maze. I rely on the ‘just look straight ahead and hope for no bad noises’ defense when faced with ‘surely this street is one-way – nope, here comes a car in the opposite direction’ situations. It works for me this time, but I vow to try another strategy in the future; preferably abandoning the mother-ship and launching the pods (bikes).
Rouen is history. The city got the shit kicked out of it in WWII; the buildings are mix of old, new, and patched-up. Amazing to think that some of them were standing when Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake in the main square...
We leave Rouen and head for the tiny town of Les Andelys. Our cigarette-lighter still isn’t working, so we power-on the sat-nav only long enough for M-A to note down the directions with pen-and-paper, before we shut it off again. However annoying you imagine this may be, believe me, it is worse. No roads in France have their actual names signed, and for our distances we are constantly converting between kilometres and miles. We miss virtually every turn. Not surprisingly, the sat-nav’s batteries run dry before we reach Les Andelys.
Somehow, right on dusk, we find the campsite. The location is fantastic. Just out of town on the banks of the Seine, we have the place almost entirely to ourselves. And, we have power; and a shower; and on the overlooking cliff an old tower; and by the river a pretty flower...what’s that? Enough already with the rhyming? Done.
The next day, M-A, still in hard-training for the London marathon, runs most of the way around France. I throw down a few laps of the camping-grounds, just enough to keep the guilt at bay. Later, we climb the hill to where the ruins of a castle lie. The day is perfect, and we can see the whole area. We spend the afternoon drinking beer, watching the barges slowly carrying their cargos up and down the Seine.
As we are departing Les Andelys, we stop in at a mechanic and M-A manages to explain our cigarette-lighter issue. The check the fuses (ahem, as had I), and conclude (ahem, as had I) that the fuse is fine (confession: it took them 20 seconds; it took me half-an-hour). They kindly abandon the tasks they had been working on, and repair the wiring for us immediately. They also charge us only 5 Euro. And people say the French aren’t helpful? M-A asks the two mechanics if they’d like to join us on our travels. The two of them, plus the camping-store attendant from Calais – this van’s going to be crowded. But, with our sat-nav powered, we are fully functional. Roll out troops.
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