We’re spending a few days in France. There are plenty of cows, not much sign of the sheep, a new wild cat trying to adopt our house (white with black blotches), and, to the amazement of the wife, a nuthatch. This is a small and apparently rarely seen bird that picks nuts from trees and then attempts to smash them outside our kitchen window.
We crossed the channel by a hovercraft operated by Speedferries. This is the no-frills, cheap-ticket way of crossing and you go from Dover to Boulogne which saves a few miles on the journey as well. Customer service however is pretty much non-existent (you amend your booking at your peril – and you are made to pay an “amendment surcharge” if Speedferries ever reply to your email). Speedferries also have a strange sense of timing. Our crossing was scheduled to depart at 14.45 and to take 45 minutes. We arrived at Dover Western Dock (the busy one with P&O et al.) at 14.15 and had only just boarded before the big, Australian-built craft set off. By 14.45 we were well clear of the harbour and enjoying the view of the fast-receding white cliffs. At 15.30 English time we were docked, on schedule, at Boulogne, but in reality the journey-time was an hour – we had weighed anchor, or whatever hovercraft do, by 14.30.
For the second year running my cousin Tim (see photo and note gaudy shirt and badge) is doing the Royal British Legion bike ride from London to Paris (see the dedicated website http://www.poppybike.org.uk/events/paris2005.asp for more information) and again we intercepted him at his refreshment stop just a few miles from our village. He is getting wiser in his old age having mastered the art of slipstreaming behind well built ladies. This way he saves himself a lot of pedaling and has time to enjoy the view. I thought that I was doing him a favour by reporting the latest Test Match news from the Oval but found that several of his fellow cyclists were wearing earphones with radios tuned to Test Match Special.
Tim invited me to join them for a few kilometers or so on my own bike but, having sweated up a few hills on the short journey to buy baguettes and croissants each morning, I know my place. Poor Tim would probably be a day late arriving in Paris if he had to hang around for the Ranting Nappa to fight with his gears on the uphill bits, even for “a few kilometers”.
