Foreign Parts

24/11/12

So, this swanning around France, what's good then and what's bad?

This can be split into two parts really, the practical and the in my head part. Practicalities it is then.

The roads. There's not really that much traffic. I have the luxury of time so am telling the sat nav to avoid toll roads. I'm tootling along the lanes. French drivers are, I suspect a bit better than British. They'll overtake a dawdling van with almost breathtaking skill. They also manage hairpin descents in the fog like professionals. I scarcely feel endangered by them, I just feel they get on with their thing around the moving bollard that is Alison. The fact that they overtake me in 50kph zones when I'm doing that pace in the middle of towns kind of astounds me, but clearly their understanding of local roads and police measures is way in excess of me.

Sat Nav. My 6 year old TomTom that really doesn't work in the UK, has no holder, functions not without a battery and has happily taken 2 hours to find satellites in the UK, only to reliably lose them in the 15 minutes before reaching the destination loves France. It was only in the van by chance, it's been dropped dozens of times, it's chipped, it's huge and clunky but in a mystery move 6 years ago it seems I did get a version with European maps. I genuinely had no idea, and frankly life would have been incredibly hard without it. It has opened doors to me, and it deserves some kind of gentle retirement or maybe upgrade when I get home. I cannot believe it's working. In the UK, maybe 2 satellites. I always thought 5 was the maximum it actually could get, but in France, it'll get 7 or 8. It's amazing.

Driving on the right, never a problem at all, toll roads, no issue.

Buying stuff. I've found that petrol stations are best used on a self service basis, as the kiosk is on the left hand side and the window too low to access. You have to get out and walk round the van to have any success in paying for petrol that's not a stick your card in and get on with it. By the way, stick an English card in the slot and the machine knows you're English and changes language accordingly. How cool is that?

Eating as the French do. Now, beyond following little old ladies around supermarkets this is difficult. I'm working on it. Buying sausage sec, local cheese, the bread, the pastries. Just haven't really worked out how the single woman with limited fridge space manages in France. The sizes of the tins of haricot beans, cannelloni beans etc. is colossal, but I'm managing my bean & pork products kind of stews. I'm limited to tinned stuff because of the economising on gas, can't really give dried beans a good couple of hours. If it takes more than 20 mins to cook I get edgy. Which means that brown rice has to go in favour of the quicker long grain / basmati. Ho hum.

Buying French cake. This is fun. Studying the available stuff and going with something different each time. Also enjoying their weird pureed fruit pots, feeling virtuous but also getting pudding. I have even found something which works as a kind of Uncle Joe's mint balls substitute which is something of a relief, and am getting my head around the French species of cereal bars.

But when do these people work and when do they eat? It's confusing. I can't seem to find a cafe open at what I thought would be breakfast coffee & croissant time. Nor do they seem to open at lunchtimes either. Lunch by the way seems to start at 12pm and finish at 3pm. But at least it means local supermarkets are open at post bike ride o'clock.

Don't drink the water. That's what I've been told by the natives, and indeed the supermarkets do seem to do a roaring trade in bottled stuff. I'm carrying two kinds in the van. In the passenger footwell we have spring water or water whose sources were potentially iffy. I'm using this mostly for laundry and when I get desperate enough, hair washing, but also for washing the pots and pans. Water in the main body of the van is purchased and used for drinking and cooking and tea & coffee, because I'm on an economic mission and coffee out every day not really possible.

Internet. This is annoying. As is the fact that McDonalds, my main reliable source of the world wide web access doesn't open until 10am. What happens with their breakfast menu, I wonder? The providers of hot spots are for those who have contract phones with them for the most part. Orange have a £10ish for 10 hours deal which lasts six months and that's OK but they aren't the widest spread hotspot provider. A few towns, tourist info offices permit use of wireless so I can tweet, I can facebook, I can pick up e-mail but oddly can't send it and can't do a lot else. It's kind of hard to stay in touch. T mobile haven't much helped by seeming to change what I could and couldn't have, package wise between the time I looked into it and my arrival. I really can't tell even now what kind of costs I'm accruing. I have tried, and it is simply what it is. I can't live in a void.