day 2 map

Auchan Calais

Auchan Calais

Boulangerie Calais

Boulangerie Calais

Aire at Forges-les-eaux

Aire at Forges-les-eaux

Forges-les-Eaux

Aire at Forges-les-eaux

Calais to Forges-Les-Eaux


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Day 2, we leave the aire de camping cars at Gravelot and return to the Auchan supermarket to finish our shopping. Auchan is not the cheapest French supermarket, my thoughts are that it's a par with Sainsbury's in the UK, prices higher than elsewhere. What this one has in its favour is that it's very convenient and generally it's worth doing the shopping at the start of a French trek rather than calling off at different places for small amounts of shopping. Depending on your point of view you may regard supermarket shopping in France as an opportunity to see and browse a different way of shopping, or you might see it as a waste of time that could be spent doing more interesting things.

There is an attitude problem in the UK where motorhomes are concerned, some people seem to think motorhome owners bring everything with them and never spend any money in places they visit. Nothing could be further from the truth, on our first shop at Auchan we spent just over 150 euro on food and wine, a range of French cheeses - Neufchattel, Beaufort, Pouligny St Pierre, Reblochon and others; Serrano type ham, seafood and a selection of wines from the Langeudoc and Alsace including crémant, which is not easy to find in the UK. We love sampling the different wines that you can purchase in France, often wines that you would never see in the UK. There is a supply threshold for supermarkets like Tesco and Asda who needs large quantities of a wine to make it worthwhile stocking. Many of the small French wine producers simply don't have the sales network to put their wines into the larger UK supermarket. That means what we in the UK see on the shelves is the mass produced wines, often of less interesting quality and taste.

Next we go across the road to the boulangerie; we could buy bread in Auchan, but the artisan bakeries are always better than the supermarkets for bread. One more call, at the Auchan filling station where we fill up with 55 litres French diesel and spend nearly 75 euro, as most motorhome users will tell you, fuel is a major part of the costs when travelling. So much for motorhome owners bringing everything with them and not spending any money, we have just purchased nearly €250 worth of shopping etc.

On the road at last, heading south. Gill wants to visit some more sites associated with William the Conqueror, so we intend to do those first. It's an uneventful drive through rural France. Our Hymer B544 is left-hand drive, so it feels normal to be on the 'other' side of the road. Some people are surprised that we have a LHD motorhome, and indeed we would have preferred RHD, but after selling our first motorhome we were 3 months without one over the summer and really wanted the B544 model. We had a choice of 3 eventually and opted for this one because it was almost new, automatic transmission and the right price, a substantial saving on the new price, available immediately and as we had no trade-in we were able to negotiate some extras in the price.

Our preferred overnight aire was at Neufchattel-en-Bray, we have stayed there previously, there are only 12 places, each with its own hardstanding and an adjacent grassy sitting area. Water, electricity and disposal facilities and included in the price. However, it was full, hardly surprising as we dawdled along on our journey and arrived late in the day, so we moved on to look at the aire at Mesnières-en-Bray 3 1/2 miles away, much smaller and rather functional, on balance we decided to move on and headed for Forges-yes-Eaux a further 17 miles. A owner was very helpful and came and made sure we were hooked up to the electricity etc. An opportunity for Alan to speak French although many of the people do speak English. There doesn't seem much point in spending time learning to speak French, then going to France and relying on the French to speak English. In many tourist places that will probably work, but one's welcome is always better when you start off speaking French even if you have to fall back to English. I say always, but there is one exception and that's Paris, where the waiters and many others don't want to be bothered speaking a little slower and listening to the English who probably sound like the gendarme in 'Allo 'Allo to them.

Having reached our overnight stop we were set up in minutes, then outside sat at our table and chairs enjoying some of the food and wine we purchased from Auchan.

 

Summary of motorhome journey

Total
miles
mpg average
speed
mph
hours
driven
128.4 29.3 32 3:54

Totals for this journey

464.0 28.8 41 11:16