Adios England!

After several manic days of packing, cleaning, and saying our farewells to our many wonderful friends in the little village in England we have called home for the past 5 year, we arose at what felt like the crack of dawn (though in truth was an hour or two afterward) to embark on our journey to Spain where we will be making our new home. Exhaustion prevents me from waxing too poetic about it all, but suffice to say that surreal is an apt description of how I am feeling at this juncture. Our start this morning was a bit late due to some space issues in the car. As is usual when loading up for a road trip there was more stuff than there was space. Some creative maneuvering and a couple of items being pruned at the last minute, along with the forgotten library book that needed depositing saw us leave the house later than we had planned. We arrived at the Dover port to catch our ferry to Calais at the stroke of 8:30am, which was unfortunately the time that said ferry was setting sail. Lucky for us the fabulous folks at P&O Ferries did not charge us extra to be on the next sailing at 10:00am. Anja and Axel started the journey with a couple hands of cards. I opted for passing the time with an adventure game I am immersed in on my laptop, though it ended up being more nodding off than gaming as the early rising and days of heavy work getting ready caught up with me.

Our ferry docked in France shortly after 11:30am local time (winds must have been on our side because that is a fast crossing), set up the SatNav destination and off we went. Eager to be on our way having had a late start, despite being quite peckish, we decided to wait to eat lunch until after we had been on the road for awhile. Approaching 2:00 we remembered, as we saw several businesses closed for lunch, that in much of France (particularly in the more rural areas, but also in the cities) you need to eat between 12-3 or you are hard pressed to find much more than a roadside pitstop until dinner time rolls around much later in the evening. At that point we said that the next town we came upon (taking the smaller, non-toll roads) we would eat our lunch. Not knowing much other than the most rudimentary geography about region, and in our dazed state of mind, we had no idea of what that might entail. I saw a sign that proclaimed 12 hotels and restaurants so we dutifully followed. Up a winding road we went, into a lovely little town, up up up to the 'ville haute' where it became progressively more scenic with each twist and turn of the narrow lanes. Finally we arrive in the heart of Montreuil Sur Mer, which unbeknown to me has quite the colorful history. We had a nice lunch in a cafe' across from a rather impressive little church


where I realized that while I remember far more French than I thought I did, that I really need to review some of the basics. No surprises on our plates - menu du juor of lasagna for Axel and Anja and a fabulous ham and cheese omelette for me. Yum! I was amused by the name of the brasserie - Le Victor Hugo - so I took a snap of it as we were getting in the car.

Little did I realize that the reason for the name is that Montreuil-Sur-Mer is where much of Les Misérables takes place! That also explains the place mats on the table advertising a grand Les Misérables extravaganza taking place currently. Knowing this now I almost wish I could have stuck around to see it.

The rest of the day is a bit of a blur. Our Sat Nav became possessed around Rouen , where new road construction had it thinking that we were driving in fields. It took us a crazy amount of time to figure out where we were on our not at all detailed road atlas while Beatrice, as we affectionately have named our Sat Nav, did her best to get us hopelessly disoriented. Eventually we were back on track and headed to Le Mans where we checked into a motel for the night well after 9:00pm, ate dinner at a nearby restaurant, and came back to the motel to crash. Well, the others have crashed. I am the fool up on the internet blogging about the day and how tired I am.

Tomorrow we are back on the road to Saint Emilion where we will be spending 3 nights camping, relaxing, and most importantly touring vineyards and tasting delicious wines of the region!

Good night for now from all of us. Keep checking back to read of our exploits. I am going to do my best to get at least a small update each day as we travel to Malaga over the next week, assuming that we have internet access wherever we go.