1 December 2022 - Baby it's cold outside!

Miles driven today = 77

Total Miles to date = 4,654

We slept well at the aire in Meaux until the bin men turned up at 7:15.  Then at 8 somebody got busy with a petrol strimmer nearby and at 8:30 a gang of men turned up in the aire and started using an angle grinder less than 20 feet from the back of the van.  We were already up but it wasn't the most relaxing start to the day and to cap it all off they blocked the service point with their vehicles so we still have this morning's shower water slopping around in the waste tank.

The journey today was grey, misty and generally very Decemberish and the scenery (or what we could see of it at least) flat and arable with a smattering of woods and lakes to make things mildly interesting.  Our mileage was exactly the same as yesterday's but by contrast today we had already reached our destination by noon.  

We are at a small paid aire just outside the village of Ailly sur Noye, which in turn is about 10 miles south of Amiens.  It's run by a company called Camping-Car Park, which I think are the same operation who own the aire in Saumur, which we were unsuccesful in getting into on the southbound leg because the machine couldn't dispense the required pass cards for new registrations.  

This time the machine did work and we have hook up and wifi for €12 plus the €5 for the card which we will be able to use again whenever we visit another of Camping-Car Park's aires.

The first job when we got here was to get ourselves online and book my campervan pass for next year's Glastonbury.  These are almost as hard to come by as festival tickets themselves but I somehow seem to have managed to book 2.  At least I can rest easy that I shall be camped with my mates yet again in the fields closest to the festival gates.

Once that was done we stretched our legs for a bit.  It was a chilly 6 degrees so the wooly hats made an appearance.  We had already driven through the village on the way in so we went for a wander around a lake which is just across the road from the aire.

There were lots of assorted geese and ducks in residence making a splendid racket as well as a flotilla of coots, which I always thought were fairly solitary birds.

These 2 were looking hopefully at us in case we had a spare crust in our pockets.

This year seems to be a bumper one for mistletoe if the trees around here are anything to go by.  Just in time for christmas if you were feeling energetic enough to clamber up and pick some.

The wifi here isn't actually up to much and our phone data is running low so we got the playing cards out last night and Lisa will probably give me another spanking at rummy this evening.  

Calais is a little over 100 miles away now and we intend to do the majority of that tomorrow, which will leave Saturday mainly free for buying food, booze and other goodies to take home with us and also hopefully allow time for one last stroll on a Normandy beach.   Our train back to the UK is booked for Sunday morning.

2 December 2022 - Familiar territory