The long road home

Our plans to stay in southern France were relatively short lived. After two nights in Nice on what was effectively a dark parking lot with Motorhome services, we headed west towards St Tropez. We wanted to return to an aire by the beach at Ramatuelle that we’d visited four years ago. We remembered it being big, light and spacious, but most importantly it led directly onto a huge beach remote from the roads. We felt the spaniels deserved some off-lead time to run free after the long journey and the strict rules for dogs around Nice, which allocates them one small patch of shingle out of 23 sections of beach.

Good news: Marmite in Carrefour

Once again we started to construct a set of plans to respond to different circumstances, reacting to news starting to come in from Spain about the lockdown there. People who were on campsites were being allowed to stay, but no new arrivals were being admitted. We wondered if we could find a quiet site in Provence and stay put for, well who knew? A month? More? It would have to be the right site, but we thought we’d found one to fit the bill. 

All the French on the aire at Ramatuelle were behaving as if nothing was happening, although by now Nick and I were wincing every time someone shook hands. We’d been carefully observing social distancing since soon after arriving in Italy, washing our hands before and after leaving the van and trying not to get too close to people. In France it seems no one was taking it seriously, and that was confirmed on Saturday evening when President Macron announced the closure of non-essential shops, and all cafés, restaurants and night clubs. He said it was out of concern that people weren't changing their habits. It wasn’t a total lockdown, but it was enough to put the kibosh on any plans to make a preemptive dash for a site. It was time to go home - at least to the UK. We'll be making other arrangements until we can get back into our house in August.

We decided that this time there would be no mad dash after a sleepless night, and we would take it a little more slowly than the retreat from Italy. The distance ahead of us as much the same as we travelled then, 1100km. Under normal circumstances we don’t drive more than 100km a day, more usually 60-70. Long days in the van are not popular with spaniels. Or with their humans come to that.

Lots of motorhomes waiting in Pélissanne

We had a long walk on the beach, packed up, and by early afternoon we were parked up in Pelissonne, near Aix en Provence, after about two hour’s driving. We had the last formal Motorhome space out of twenty, several other vans were parked elsewhere. Almost all were French, and none looked to be moving in a hurry. We took the dogs out for a stroll in the sunshine, watched people playing boules and teenagers on the skatepark, and settled in for some route planning, and the necessary writing of the pages for the Redruth Rugby programme, which has continued throughout our trip. At that point the inevitable message arrived from my old colleagues on Breakfast - could one of us go on air in the morning to talk about our experience. Nick volunteered, and we settled in for an early night.

A wander around Pélissanne

The next morning the interview with Louise on Breakfast went off smoothly, I phoned the local vet to get an appointment for the spaniels to have their pre-tunnel checks, and Nick eventually managed to get through to the Caravan and Motorhome Club, through which we'd booked our Tunnel tickets. They were suspicious when he said we had tickets for July, having dealt with lots of callers asking what do do about summer holidays. As soon as he said we were in France and trying to get home, they sprang into action, and we soon had a new booking for Wednesday afternoon. We set off to walk the pups, and were detained briefly by a couple of men from French motorhomes, who assured us that the virus wasn't at all dangerous, it was all government propaganda. They also told us rather gleefully that the borders were closing tonight and we wouldn't be able to get home. We made our excuses and left.

By twelve o'clock the pups had been seen by a lovely French vet, and we were back on the road, heading north of Lyon. After three hours driving, with a stop for lunch, we pulled into an aire for the night. It was full, but Florence is small enough to tuck into a car space, and we settled in to watch first Boris Johnson and then Emmanuel Macron doing a press conference. The contrast in style was noticeable, and shed some light on the attitude of the dubious Frenchmen, who clearly don't like being alternatively cajoled and threatened. I make no comment about Boris Johnson, but I'll back evidence based science, computer modelling and behavioural psychology over promises to punish miscreants any day.