A big tour of France

We just got back from our big tour of France. France is a bit bigger than it needs to be, there’s a lot of boring nothingness in the middle that no one would really miss if they got rid of it and added it to somewhere that could do with spreading out a bit like Tokyo. We’ve got a scratch map of France and we’ve really done most of the best bits now:

This is only places we’ve stayed overnight. Stripes means not all 4 of us have been there, it was before one or both the boys were born.

I mentioned last time that we won a weekend in Paris and that we turned it into a longer trip to see Dan’s family and my French exchange partner from the year 2000! And we just visited some new bits of France. By a weird timing coincidence, or maybe just the fact that people go on trips when they have a 2 week February half term, Dan’s cousin and family came to stay with us just before we left. They were on their own road trip in the opposite direction. They came from the west, from one of the pointless empty departments of France called Ger,s and were heading to Marseille, so we were a handy stop off. 

Dan’s cousin Patricia is the same age as us and also has 2 boys a similar age to our boys. Last time we saw them was a big party they had for their 10th wedding anniversary when we hadn’t been in France long and apart from Dan none of us could really speak French. This time the boys were all chatting away in French and Patricia commented on how their accent was 100% french. Obviously mine is still only about 7% French but I could follow conversation well and say some stuff badly. They slept over and we had a lovely meal together, they’re a nice family and we have a good amount in common. And it was great to hang out.

They left on Monday morning for Marseille, and we left to Bordeaux. It about 4 and a half hours drive. I drove for around an hour of that and there were no major incidents. I followed the sat nav fine and didn’t bash into anything. It’s important to note that for later. 

For this trip we were staying in a selection of the worst rooms Airbnb has to offer, so I was actually presently surprised by how nice a garden shed on the outskirts of Bordeaux was. We got there late afternoon and then headed out on the tram to explore the city. We didn’t have time to see a lot but from what I saw it seemed nice. They had a shop selling Pokémon cards so the boys were happy. For tea we had our pie left overs from the night before in the glorified garden shed. That’s the great thing about having a car in Europe, if you had flown for a city break from London I bet you wouldn’t take your pie leftovers. 

The next Day we went further north to La Rochelle. It’s only about 2 hours so we had more time to explore and enjoy it. Or we would have had chance to enjoy it if it wasn’t for our whining children who do not enjoy wandering round places with no purpose, or eating mussels despite the fact one of them ordered moule frites. They cheered up a bit when we went to a beach on the Île-de-Re. It’s an island you can get to by bridge. It’s 4 euros on and free to get off, but if I worked for their council as a fundraiser I’d make it free to get on and 100 euros to leave. We saw people with kite buggies which was really fun. Then we went to sleep in a holiday park mobile home.

The next part of the trip was all going to plan. It was maybe 3 hours 30 to Dan’s Auntie’s house in Vitré.  This auntie is the mum of cousin Patricia. We also saw Dan’s Grandma, she loved seeing her great grandchildren talking fluently in French. Her own daughter (Dan’s mum) left France as an 18 year old and became very English, so it feels like a nice kind of completing of a cycle that her great grandchildren are currently very French. 

On the way Dan had been driving for a while so I took over for a bit, but just after a little picnic stop in Nantes I hit a curb and completely flattened a tyre. Annoyingly we had a spare full-sized tyre in our front yard at home that Dan considered bringing but decided against it. Dan put on what the French call a galette (pancake) the thin spare tyre that you’re not meant to have already driven hundreds of miles on. We could drive on it but only to get to a garage where they could get us a new tyre. Except they wanted to get us 2 new front tyres and do some kind of an alignment thing for safety. This came to more than the entire cost of fuel we used for this 2300 km trip. And added 2 hours to our journey time. The guy did say they have big curbs in Nantes, so not my fault!

Vitré

Dan’s auntie has a cool house with a loft room that’s like a sixth form common room of dreams. The boys loved playing pool and table football, and we enjoyed incredible French cooking and 4 course meals that take hours. We caught up with another of Dan’s cousins and explored a bit of Vitré.

Percy with his great auntie and his great grandma

Next we were off to Paris, to see my French bestie Flick who made us an Eiffel Tower themed lunch! We had this incredible pink meringue topped with fruit and cream and sprinkles followed by an Eiffel Tower making competition.

It was a lot of fun catching up. We then drove right through the centre of Paris including what must be the worlds most stressful roundabout the Arc de Triomphe which has 12 exits. I mean it wasn’t stressful for me, I was just filming it for TikTok videos, but Dan did a great job and didn’t even hit any curbs.

Saturday was our only full day in Paris and we were going to climb the 670 steps up to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. But just to make sure we were really tired by the end of the day, we missed our bus from the campsite to the train station and had to walk 30 minutes to begin the day. 

If you asked Percy he would say he kept us all going on the boring walk by telling us exciting facts about the Eiffel Tower that he’s been learning at school. If you asked me I would say that we tolerated listening to facts because they were distracting him from complaining about the walk. We then were on various forms of public transport for a really long time before we began the climb. This is my 3rd time up and I doubt I’d go again, 3 is enough for a life time. The new thing they had this time was a netted bridge that goes diagonally between the corners very high up so you can look down and feel a bit wobbly. 

After that we met up with Flick again and went to see some modern art,. I loved the massive colourful piece by Raoul Duffy that you could sit in the middle of. We all talked about which panel we would take home if we could. We mucked around a bit, and got some snooty looks from the security guard. 

I love art, but I hate looking at stuff without touching it, in silence, in pretentious buildings. I’ve always thought art galleries and swimming pools should combine. There’s nothing to look at if you’re swimming lengths in a boring pool, and then galleries there’s stuff to look at but nothing to do with your body. In the afternoon we went to look round the lego shop and then went out for pizza. We were so tired, but unfortunately our bus to the campsite was cancelled so we had to walk again. At the end of the day Dan’s watch said he had done 20,000 steps!

On Sunday we packed up our stuff and had a little wander round a local park before going to visit my friend Morgane. She was my French exchange partner from the year 2000, when I was 14. Other people called it the French exchange, for me it was more like a mime workshop. First we were pen pals. I actually swapped for her, my friend was given the info sheet about her and she looked more interesting than the one I had. I said to my friend, “your one looks fun” and she said, “you can have her” it’s weird how that little swap lead to me eating a delicious raclette in the outskirts of paris 25 years later.

Me and Morgane in the brace gerbil days.
That bit of head in the corner is now taller than me.

I had met her one other time since then, in 2013. Me and Dan were on our big trip and I was still awful at French, but he could translate for me now, so through Dan we were able to have loads of conversations that we couldn’t have back in the early 2000s. It was a fun meet up then and since moving here I’ve thought I would love to see Morgane again and be fluent at French and for my kids to meet her kids. Unfortunately I’m not fluent at French yet, but I am pretty good at understanding it and I can speak it badly. Next time, maybe in another 13 or so years, we can meet again and maybe I will be fluent. It seems unlikely, given that I recently asked a sales assistant for a box of oasis instead of a bottle.

Me and Morgane 2025

We travelled back to Perpignan via a village near Clermont-Ferrand. I wonder if anyone has been to that city to actually see it, or if everyone there is just half way between Paris and an interesting southern city. I imagine that everyone who has ever moved there just had one nights stay over there and met someone they liked there, I can’t see any other reason you would go. A bit like Coventry where I’m from. My Dad moved there for a job, my Mum moved there for uni, they never intended to get stuck there for most of their lives.

We finally arrived home on Monday, I drove for 90 minutes of the journey and nothing bad happened. The 66 region welcomed us back with a beautiful sunset.

The Job Hunt Roller Coaster

 I wanted to get a blog out before we go on a french road trip tomorrow. Long car journeys did really well out of their rebrand to road trips. It’s the exact same thing but it feels like an adventure. It’s the start of half term and what better way to celebrate than to drive for hours and stay in someone’s glorified garden shed. We won 2 nights stay in a holiday park last summer by entering a photo competition with this photo:

 Dan can actually tell people that a topless photo of himself won us a holiday. We could have a weekend in any of the mar villa holiday parks, we could stay in one half a hour away with waterchutes in the summer, or we could use one of the only one’s that’s open all year and stay in Paris.

And since we’re going that far north, (it’s about 8 hours) we could also go and see Dan’s extended family who live in the north west. And then we’ve added 3 more stops to break up the journey so we’re not actually ever doing a 8 hour drive. So we have 3 nights in the most budget Airbnbs we can find. Let’s see if this is a fun family road trip or just one long car journey between garden sheds.

Last weekend was a weird rollercoaster of emotions, on Friday night Dan was really excited to have found a job advertised that he thought he would be perfect for. It was translating french documents into English for the tourist board of a village near to us. There was also to procedure writing and some IT both of which he has done in previous jobs. The job was just a year contract, but maybe they would extend after I’m not sure. I was excited for him, this felt like a real opportunity, I had felt like we would probably be leaving France but this could be a chance to stay. 

I feel fine about staying another year here it’s beautiful and sunny pretty much all the time, and we can see a mountain with snow on from our window.  The idea of staying another 10 years does scare me a bit. And ideally for the kids education we need to make a decision and stick to it so they can be in one place. At the boy’s local school Percy is in the last year of primary school so he would be starting secondary school in September if we stayed. But if we went back to England he would only go back into year 6 the last year of primary school in the UK. So this would be a better time to leave because he could get used to England and then go to open days and apply for secondary schools. But another year here would change that, he would have to start secondary school here, and then I’d have to work out how to apply for schools in England when you can’t visit them and you don’t have a home address to apply from. And then it might be a big change for Percy to suddenly be schooled in scouse, he’d have to learn some new vocab like “lolly ice” instead of “ice lolly” I don’t know if he’s too old to pick up local accents now. Ok I’m half joking but he’d have to wear a uniform again which he would hate. And it would be hard for him to start a new school here knowing that it wouldn’t be for long.

Maybe Dan could do that job for a year and then maybe something else would come up in that time or maybe that job would be extended but I dont know what I can do here long term. English teaching is ok, I like elements of it. But I once got paid to put on a taskmaster surprise party for someone that involved everyone in kayaks collecting rubber ducks from a river. And I once got paid to make a life sized elephant from willow that was worn by 4 people (one in each leg.) Teaching English grammar as a dyslexic just isn’t quite as fulfilling. All this was going round in my head while I was at my roller dance class. I love roller dance, it’s so fun just a massive hall and music and a lot of freedom to do what you want. Sometimes its a big daydream time for me, and people think I’m not understanding the instructions because I’m english but its actually because I can just switch my brain off to french chatting a little to easily and I’m just in my own head. Skating makes me so happy because it’s really fun but also a bit sad when I feel like I could be really good friends with these people if I could communicate better.

Anyway that Saturday I was wizzing round thinking about our whole situation and just feeling really uncomfortable about staying for a year, feeling like we’d just be extending the time in limbo, not really making a decision. Then on Sunday I felt a bit more fine about it, I do love France, and I’ve heard the Uk is not lovely right now. Dan worked really hard all night on his application and sent it in.

First thing Monday morning he got a email back saying he didn’t get it because he didn’t have 1 year’s experience on a specific piece of soft where made for people who work in the tourist information industry. Dan was gutted, I didn’t know what to feel. I was sad for him though, he’s applying for everything now, supermarkets, Mac Donald’s and jobs in England. He doesn’t want to maybe back to Liverpool because he thinks it will be too weird and we’ve “completed it” like we’ve done all the fun things there are to do. And also crime, it is much safer and quieter in our little French village than where we used to live. 

I get all those points but I just think I can get over it, and a little bit of crime is sometimes fun to watch out the window. When the police once asked if they could look inside our canoes in our yard for a man on the run, that was good fun. When my friend had to knock on the door of our drug dealer neighbours to ask if she could throw some carrots over the wall because she was meant to be feeding our rabbit but I had forgotten to leave her a key, that was retrospectively funny. When a guy was shoot dead right opposite the house and the ambulance didn’t come to save him because the area was not safe. That was horrific. (All these incidents happened in our first Liverpool house not the one will still own)

We’ve talk about living somewhere else in the UK, it has to be the north because all our best people are there, but Dan wants more countryside and mountains and he doesn’t want criminals hiding in his kayaks. I chatted to my old student housemate Josh this week who lives on the edge of the Lake District. I respect Josh a lot for doing his own thing, in his 20s he toured Europe on a tricycle and performed circus skills everywhere. In his 30s he made a horse box into the most incredible eco home, and set up an arts organisation. He’s more recently moved into a real house and is fostering 2 kids with his partner Alex. So he told me all about what is going on in his region for artists, and what there is to do for fun, and what the house prices are like etc. It was intriguing, and Dan found it really interesting too. But when I mentioned it to Percy he said “no, leaving France is already a compromise for me, if we leave why wouldn’t we go back to where we know everyone” and then he was pretty angry about it. If you move from Liverpool to the lakes it’s beautiful but if you move from the Pyrenees to the lakes it’s just the same thing but colder and wetter.

So who knows, we’re trying to have all the fun we can here while we can. Me and Dan snuck of for a sneaky ski while the kids were in school this week. We dropped them off at 8:40am, drove for an hour and 20. Got a 4 hour ski pass and we’re back in time for school pick up at 4:30. It feels a not naughty but we might never get to ski here again and going without the kids was great. Ski wise they are an ok level to come with us, but they cannot cope with their emotions if they fall over or get tired or feel something is unfair.

When I started this blog I said we were going on a road trip tomorrow, but now we’re on day 2 of the road trip, that’s how long it takes to finish a blog with kids. I’ll talk about the road trip next time. Au revoir.