Migration route

18.2.12

HAVING sworn to avoid motorways as much as possible, we’ve travelled on them almost all the way down through France. The traffic is, for the most part, so light that it doesn’t feel stressful at all.

 I’ve even driven the Hymer myself for all of 20 kilometres. My husband said the autoroute might be the easiest place to get used to it because there’s not much manoeuvring involved, and he was right. I’m still not at ease with it, but it will get better with time.

My advice for pitstops – take a short detour off the motorway, it’s so much nicer. We found another lovely little aire in the town of Vivonne where we parked up under the plane trees in the square to enjoy our French bread and some very un-French strong Cheddar that had been presented to us by our friends Alison and Harry in a bagful of goodies they thought we might miss while abroad.  

Surprising things we saw along the way … wide, frozen rivers, though little trace of the recent heavy snowfalls; what looked like a huge corrugated iron warehouse on the roadside in the middle of nowhere advertising tea dances inside; 28 buzzards perched on fence posts.

Now we are at Les Granges, our friends’ home, where we’ve been sitting on the patio outside their converted barn, eating lunch in 27-degree sunshine! It may still be icy at night, but by day it’s like an English summer.

On a long walk across the fields to visit another English couple we’ve met before, our attention is caught by the calling of common cranes circling overhead. We look up and there must be a hundred of them, getting into V formation, migrating northward. By the end of the afternoon at least a thousand have passed over the house, in wave after wave, an unforgettable sight.