Overland with Kids

Click this 1-10-diary to see diary.

Bonjour from Sonzay! Again, we are keeping a diary but do not seem to be able to upload it. The best we can do is to try to add as a text (.txt) file - see link above - but we do not seem to be able to do anything else. Jessica’s diary is also included if you want to try to access. We have very quickly read everyone’s kind comments and thank you to everyone who has done everything they can to help us - especially Lee from Landyzone who kindly offered to collect and tow our caravan down into central France should we need along with a place to stay at his home if we would like. And to all now new found firm friends we have met along the way who have provided us useful advice and assistance.

We are currently in Sonzay, very near to Tours without caravan or vehicle. We managed to find a kind gentleman willing to take our caravan into storage at his house for a few days at Vic-sur-Aisne, a small village where we were staying, before moving on from Berny Riviere. Our vehicle is in Amiens and we have just been informed today that we must pay 1,040.00 Euros to get it fixed. We have been in touch with Foley’s vehicle specialists throughout our saga and they are arranging to send a specialist part from the UK to the garage in France to help the process.

But after spending thousands on servicing and modifications with Foley’s including a new cam belt before leaving, we are not sure where we stand with this.

We are hoping to be able to collect vehicle on Friday and then caravan so will need to go back almost to Calais before being able to make our return journey back through France.

This is better than where we have been the past few days where possibilities included repatriation of our vehicle to the UK or to get Foley’s to send someone with parts but no guarantee of fixing within France.

We have had a few frenzied days which has included collection of a 9-seater Renualt Traffc vehicle we have mananaged to hire but then Anne crashed into another vehicle just 10 minutes after acquiring (we are not having much luck!). Nothing too serious but no wing mirror and badly scratched and dented vehicle along one side. The stationary vehicle - a large work van Anne managed to crash into came off with worse damage but the guy (who happens to be a hunter and owns a hunting shop) luckily was very nice. The upside was that Anne managed to see most of the Champagne region en-route to Epernay (200km) where she collected the vehicle plus the outskirts of Soissons and it’s huge historic black stone looking cathedral on the way back to the campsite. Between times she spent the day in the hunter’s shop exchanging details and miming via a game of charades to help break down the language barrier!

So, we still have the hire vehicle (minus the wing mirror!), two pop up tents which were a last minute thought in the packing process but have somehow managed to save our lives!), 3 out of 4 of our bikes, plus luggage and food and are currently surrounded by sunflower fields and sun.

We have done alot with the children despite our mishaps including Disneyland - now a firm number one favourite of the children, have seen all shapes and sizes of chateaux, cycled alot, swim everyday and go sightseeing.

While in Berny, we have visited the beautiful village of Pierrefonds and it’s chateau there plus the port village of Fontenoy. Yesterday from our base in Sonzay, we spent the afternoon in Amboise, home of Leonardo Da Vinci. The area is spectacular and lies on the banks on the Loire River - we dipped our feet into it and it was lovely! The chateau there is very grand and the city very old and medieval with an old stone bridge. On the way out via Tours and Rochecorcorbon you can see how people have dug out caves from the rocks (used to build the old houses) and utilise what is left to build wine cellars and homes. The area is very romantic and tranquil and we have learned why the French are so proud of their country - so far we have struggled to leave each location we have visited as there is so much to see and do.

The children have tried FROGS LEGS and they loved them and are delicious. Big Andrew is not so sure but for us we’ll never look at a frog the same way again - ha! Jessica and AJ have also tried mussels in cream which they also liked very much so their palettes are open and willing to try anything it seems.

We have had rain storms and discovered where all the leaks on our caravan are located before putting into storage - luckily we brought plenty of duck tape and containers for drips. We have had to tip the caravan roof a few times! But we have loved our experiences so far, each and everyone and the children remain unfased. We have only had one instance from the homeboy AJ and that was following his first night in the pop-up tent -  he wanted to go home but was very happy in the caravan and wanted to know why we don’t have it or our vehicle anymore.

Late yesterday we headed back to our campsite which is very simple and pretty compared to our last location. We are surrounded by fields, farmland and comine harvesters. We headed back through Luynes and Pernay and plenty more chateuax to be seen at every turn - there is no shortage of them here - very romantic area.

We have gotten to grips nicley with our petrol Coleman duel fuel stove and our Cobb for barbeques. We have no fridge currently as this is fixed in our main vehicle back at Amiens so daily shopping for beer, cider and meat, fruit and baquettes has to suffice. Tough life! We brought plenty of dried food e.g. rice, pasta and 3 giant boxes of weetabix for the children, long life milk and sugar from UK so we’re very happy food wise.    

Housekeeping-wise, including web updates - seems to be averaging about once a week on a Wednesday - so tune in this time next week if you can. Again cost to use internet is 8 Euros so tring to avoid over-using. You can track our progress via FindMeSpot page meanti,e. Password is twospringerspaniels as we are no longer concerned about security for this.

We have more photos but taking too long to upload these so we’ll try again during our next post. 

 Au revoir for now

The ’O Team’

xxxx 

Diary (Blog)