I ate gizzards!!

Yes it's true, I knowingly ate gizzards. I even ordered them myself from the menu. How can duck gizzards taste good? I'm a confirmed 'no offal' person, but a gizzard salad, french style is absolutely delicious.

Au Petit Lombard

Anyway, as you can see, we now have some internet access. We've been staying at a friends' house in the south of France for almost 3 weeks, and the internet access is patchy even once we got the Orange gizmo to work.

The weather has been amazing, warm and sunny with cool evenings. Ruth and Sandie have been to visit and we have overdosed on churches, villages, food (esp duck) and of course the local vino. The wine here is so cheap, we are in wine wanker's heaven. We've also been overdosing on chèvre chaud salad, simply divine.

We actually had 3 days of no alcohol after the girls left, as we thought we'd end up just fat alcoholics. Not the way I want to get into the record books "The world's fattest alcoholics found in the South of France".

Our market shopping

Our local village, Monfort, is really quaint with a 14th century covered marketplace. We had lunch at the restaurant on Sunday, 5 courses for 18 euros plus wine. A dog adopted us and decided to follow us home as we were on foot. He just ambled along behind us until finally Lawrence went to get the car and we took the dog back to a shady spot where it just sat with us and looked terribly put out when we left it there! Apparently he makes a habit of this (the dog, not Lawrence), but we are staying 3 kms from the village and weren't sure what we'd with him.

Lawrence took the girls out for  run in the Mog, they came back white-faced and very quiet.

Ruth bravely posing before her ride.

My next project is to do some redecorating, if I'm to seriously make friends with the truck we need new seat covering in our dining area. So yes, you guessed it, I'm attempting the recovering myself. This could be interesting - watch this space...

Incommunicado

Geez, you followers can be demanding! We are having internet access issues, which are trying to sort out with Orange in Toulouse. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Our 5 days in Champagne were fab and we bought lots of champagne - hence lack of posts from there.

We have arrived in France

Well, we made it. We survived our underwater crossing on a large train, where everyone came to inspect the Mog as it's quite a talking point. Someone asked me this morning where we were going, so I said "Malaysia". Lawrence doesn't seem to tire of talking about our plans and the truck, so he has become the spokesperson.

We are camped in a lovely Caravan Park in Licques, not too far from Calais. It's very peaceful and rural, quite bucolic. I went for my first ride on scooter, and we came back from the village with our baguette, I felt very French. The French still don't know how to make tea.

I spent a couple of hours lying on a blanket under our tree reading a book - sheer heaven. We are here for 3 nights and then move on the Champagne - God knows what we'll find to do there...

I've been reading Ewen McGregor's 'Long Way Round' and have started to see the advantages of a Mog - in countries without roads that is.

London calling...

After leaving our haven in Northern Wales and our friends Kath and Pete, and their divine dogs Sophie and Daisy (see photo of curly coated retriever), we headed south.  We spent 2 days in a wee village called Spratton in Northamptonshire. These friends, Mark and Stephanie, have a cottage attached to their house, so we were living in luxury. Managed to visit an equal number of pubs and churches, so everybody was happy (well, maybe more pubs than churches). We then spent 2 days in Stratford-upon-Avon with Liz and Paul, before heading to London to catch up with the truck.

Our cottage in Northamptonshire

We have now been in London for 4 days AND so has the Mog. Lawrence drove it down from Lancaster without incident. It is residing in Rochester in a friend's work yard, lurking behind porta-cabins, so no-one steals it (we should be so lucky!). Anyway, I am gradually making friends with it, and it had rewarded me by revealing a secret wine storage cupboard, which of course made me very happy. 

I've scrubbed the living area and stocked it with our goodies from IKEA etc and it's starting to look like home. Once the Riedel wine glasses are in situ, we'll be ready to roll. We also have the weather on our side which always makes things seem better, today is 21 degrees..!!

We head for France on Monday, which is the real start to our adventures as we will be without backup rescue teams. We need all you atheists out their to pray for us - is there a Unimog God I wonder? If so, we'll need to sacrifice a goat and bottle of cheap Prosecco or something similar on Monday. Will keep you posted, assuming we survive driving underwater across the channel.

At the Beach in Anglesea - N.Wales

Need I say more?...

















We are still without The Mog.