We have to resign our self to being in port for some time yet. We are being sensible and not venturing beyond the limits we set ourselves. It is very frustrating though when you just want to get going. So we have been painting, umm not very adventurous is it?
We came upon boating in a very roundabout way. It was all Martyns idea to start with, it didn't take me long to become as enthusiastic about it as he was. In 1996 Martyn and I decided to take a road trip to France on a Vespa P200. We set off one Friday in early June and headed for Ayr in Scotland. Now I know that's the wrong way but we had a scooter rally to attend first! That journey is another blog page worth of stories!
On the Monday we went to Liverpool and got our passports, continuing on to Ipswich to pick up the green card before heading off to Dover. Now don't get me wrong, we had discussed and pre-planned the trip in our heads, just not completed the preparations. Story of our lives..... Luckily for us the Passport office and the Insurance company took pity.
We arrived in Calais in the dark, and put up our tent somewhere near a beach on the North coast of France. We didn't sleep well, not surprsing as we had no idea where we were! The original intention of the trip was to make it Santa Ponsa in Majorca where Martyns' brother lived. Our next stop, coupled with an unfortunate map reading incident resulted in us giving up on that idea maybe a lttle too quickly.
We awoke to find ourselves in a very French campsite (yes, I know they are French in France!)and I used my very best GCSE French to pay the bill. We set off again to find ourselves lost in Paris, eventually finding a campsite near Fountainbleu, on the banks of the Seine. What an amazing experience we had there. Little did we know that we had landed in the middle of a campsite that was hosting a festival for Django Reinhardt. Reinhardt was a Gypsy jazz guitarist who lost the use of the third and fourth fingers of his left hand in a fire but miraculously continued to play the guitar. We met some fabulous people there, many from England, including a great spoons player from South Yorkshire - amazing characters who took us under their wing, plying us with cold beers - we repaid them with warm ones from the local cheap supermarket. I blame the festival atmosphere for a terrible faux pas in map reading. We were trying to work out how far we had to go to make it to the ferry in Spain to take us across to Majorca. We decided it looked too far and thought we might as well just have some fun in France. We discovered later that the map was duplicated over the page and we were seeing almost twice the distance it actually was. Yes, we really do intend plotting our course around the coast of England.......
We spent a few days chilling on the banks of the Seine. We watched enormous barges pass by with washing lines and small cars parked on the the roof - yes they take their cars with them. We can't even get our scooters on our boat! Just as well we could chill out by day as the music just played on through the night - it created a great atmosphere but we got vertually no sleep!
We eventually got going again and said good bye to the lovely people who had made us feel so welcome. We continued on from Fountainbleu to the South of France, through mountains and Vineyards. At this point we realised our error - one day from Paris to the the South oops! We landed in Montpellier around 10pm and ran out of petrol - the first but not the last time on this trip. An interesting night ensued with us us walking around some of the dodgier areas of Montpellier looking for a petrol station that was open - we were not successful and spent the night trying to talk in broken French to some very colourful characters. Character building!! We survived the evening needless to say and eventually got petrol to take us to our next campsite. They weren't so friendly here and took our passports, being naive, we let them! We spent our only day on the beach drinking small bottles of beer and eating an unusual pizza.. the least said the better... We watched the young, rich French kids who had landed their speedboat on the beach. I managed a perfectly English suntan - lobster red and stripey, with a very red nose! The next day we moved on to Perpignon to an English campsite and took amusement from the various coachloads turning up, all ready to get a perfectly English tan of their own! That evening we walked into the town and discovered the Marina. We sat out at a cafe and watched the boats bobbing up and down and listened to the clink clink of the masts.
I didn't realise the impact this trip had had on Martyn. When I look back at all the places we stopped, everyone of them, with the execption of Besancon was on or near the water. We travelled 3500 miles in ten days and had a great time. We essentially drove a figure of eight throughout France, Paris, Claremont Ferrand, Montpellier, across to Perpignon, up through the Dordoigne and over to Besancon to watch the Tour de France near the Swiss border before heading for home. This is when we ran out of pertol again, on the way to the ferry in a town called Festieux. We were saved by a chap who spoke no English, yet trusted us enough to take us back to his home and give us the petrol from his lawnmower. Yes, we did wonder at one point if we would be seen again, however this man wanted nothing more than to help two scruffy, smelly 'Crazy English' (as we were called quite regularly) on a Vespa.
It was one of our first adventures and one we will never forget!
On our return we started to look for for somewhere to rent. We found an enormous house in Hebden Bridge, every room was painted a different colour. We had all sorts of ideas what we would do with it! We got the money ready and were on route to meet the guy and sign the contract when Martyn said, why don't we buy a boat.......?
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