Gironas Missing Apostrophe

We crossed into France via the EuroTunnel and headed towards our first campsite South East of Rouen where we had a lovely pitch on the banks of the Seine. Les Andelys is a beautiful little town and the impressive Chateau Gaillard stands high above the river. The Castle was built to protect the Norman frontier by Richard the Lionheart, who among his many titles was Duke of Normandy, I don't suppose he had much of a hand in doing the building work, but how did he have the time to get that organised alongside the crusades? On our second day on site I thought we might have been heading for our own crusade, as the sky darkened and a strong wind rocked the van from side to side, this was followed by torrential rain and then hailstones. I had visions of us slipping off the pitch into the Seine and floating off down the river. Then as quickly as it started it stopped and the sun came out. It wasn't until we met a couple later on our trip who told us about the hurricane and tornadoes that had left a trail of destruction  through the Calais region, I think we had caught the back end of it and we were lucky to have not travelled a day later.

Marleen the MoHo

Three weeks! Are you sure? I'd been waiting 14 long months for the Motorhome to arrive, there had been many false dawns along the way as promised delivery dates came and faded into the distance. Then at the beginning of August our dealer called to say the MoHo had arrived. Well the joy lasted for about 30 seconds as he then went on to say, we just need to wait for the paperwork to arrive and then we can register the vehicle and you can collect it. Ok, so how long do you expect that to take? I asked, well usually about three weeks. My protestations appeared to drift over the salesman's head, as he said yes three weeks is really good, during the Covid lockdown it was taking up to three months! Then of course the next penny dropped as I realised where we were heading, it was pointless to collect the van a week before we could register it on a 72 plate on 1st September. So three weeks became 4. It was as though Christmas had arrived, the presents were sitting under the tree but I had to wait until the end of January to open them. Despite the swirl of emotions going round my head, pragmatism took over and we agreed on a collection date of 1st September. We did though arrange to have a sneaky peak at the big shiny present a couple of weeks before we collected it, just to make sure it was as we remembered it after all this time.