Toilette gratuit

So sorry it has been a long time since I have written anything on this blog. Yes we are still alive and surviving alright! It has been quite some time since we have had a internet connection hence the delay. Libraries are not prevelant in France it seems, or if there is one it opens at odd hours. Today the one in this town opened at three pm and there has been endless hassles trying to get internet going on our devices. Arrgh. Well, nevermind. I'll tell you a little about what we have been up to in the last week.

Last Saturday morning we started out towards Belgium. We were sad to say goodbye to the friendly, English speaking Dutch – the land of uniformly tidy houses, great roads, matching tree plantings, cobbled streets with no concrete patch-ups and the cheapest diesel we’ve seen so far in Europe (though it’s surprisingly almost double the price of New Zealand fuel!).

One thing we were glad to leave behind is the gaping lack of public toilets! There were hardly any at all and even if we were lucky enough to be in a restaurant it would cost between 50cents to a Euro to use it. Even at petrol stations which seemed a bit crazy. At the library it was free but you needed a key from the desk if you wanted to use it. So our main concern after we’ve left the comfort of our wonderful and generous friends and family was reduced to very basic needs. Where can we park? Where can we find the next toilet? Where can we dump our grey water? And, where can we fill up our water tank? These questions are what we base our coming day around and have also been the basis of quite a few of our arguments.

The first week in our camper was filled with quite a lot of tension and more angry words than we had been prepared for. Of course – six people crammed into a tiny space and standing (literaly!!) on each others’ toes and each having an idea of what the day should be filled with has been somewhat challenging to say the least.

Yesterday morning things were really not going well. It was cold, we all needed to go to the toilet (we can do number 1 in the toilet on the bus by the way in case you were wondering!), we had run out of food because the previous day we had not realized that in France the shops keep different hours, we had two piles of stinky washing, and we needed internet to sort out the girls school work which we’ve had endless trouble with.

We found a Burger King the previous night with wifi which was great and had parked up in a big parking lot next to it. (In France the rules for Freedom camping are great- you can park up anywhere that is an official parking spot! In Holland there was only one designated spot per town.) There was even a big washing machine unit that I was excited about using that morning to wash our severely smelly clothes in, but after loading all the clothes into it and putting in some money I found out that it didn’t work so had to return all our gross stuff to the bus. (We have been doing hand washing but the weather hasn’t been warm enough to dry anything in the time we are stationary so the washing was really piling up!)

The girls and I decided to walk over to burger king at about 9:15 am to by a hot drink, use the toilet and the wifi. Josh drove to the other side of town to an Aldi (a really great and cheap supermarket). Unfortunately when we got to the Burger King we noticed that it wouldn’t open till 11! I had no credit on my phone and Josh was gone for 1.5 hours. We sat in the cold outside for ages and though we could get the wifi I started suffering from a sever lack of patience and thought I might start loosing it when the girls schoolwork wouldn’t work and the batteries to the devices went flat.

Josh eventually came back with food, the BK opened and it was warm inside. We could charge some devices and Josh saved the day with getting something sorted with the school work. I was feeling ashamed at my feelings of despair. It was all the little things adding up for a moment there.

We drove on to a beautiful little sea-side town (St Valarie) where we met up with our lovely friends Daniel and Glencora who have joined us on our first leg of the journey in France. As soon as I saw them I felt much better and we all enjoyed the gorgeous medieval town – walking though the streets admiring all the ancient buildings and enjoying Daniel, Glencora and Jella’s company. We are all a bit happier it seems when we have company!

And Yay for France! They have free public toilets! And they are always nice and clean. People are very friendly here too and on the street say ‘Bonjour’ and sometimes other things which I’m sorry to say I can’t understand. My head is still filled with little phrases in Dutch and so today while I have wifi I’ll brush up on my French and get some French happening in my head.

Sorry for the lack of photos on this post. I can't figure out how to add them from this computer sorry!