Montreuil to Le Crotoy

Wednesday 25th May

Montreuil to Le Crotoy

I am now the proud possessor of a French mobile, bought at a French post office. This was not a straightforward mission, involving as it did much paperwork, passports and miscommunication. They had no English, my French just about extends to asking for wine, cheese and bread at the shops (pretty much all you need for day to day existence here). In particular my French is not strong in the realms of mobile data networks, complex price tariffs and phone unlocking. So I got to know the entire staff of the post office, who were very helpful, very well. In fact I would probably now be greeted as an old friend in the house of the head post office man's grandmothers second cousin. Once removed.

Another interesting point - UK phones seem to have a huge variety of operating languages; I recall one of my son and heirs playfully setting my 'phone to Serbo-Croat, or some such arcane lingo. But does a French 'phone allow English as an operating language? In the words of General de Gaulle: Non.

So time to move on from Montreuil; we headed for Le Crotoy. This is a small village on the North shores of the Bay of the Somme. We stayed on an Aire, which is a cheap French motorhome stopover, next to the sand dunes. and very nice too. It should have been 5 euros but the ticket machine was "hors de service" which I translated as wounded and out of action. So it was free.

We had a cycle trip around the bay with the dogs in the late afternoon, spotted a few white herons (Egrets?) and snacked on local strawberries half way round. Very civilised.

There was a potential catastrophe on the cooking front in the evening; Miss Packing  List had forgotten to pack a corkscrew, and the absence of white wine would have detracted from the chicken in white wine and tarragon the sous chef wanted to create.

I had to resort to the time honoured remedy of pushing the cork in to the bottle; messy but effective. And then Miss P L  had the temerity to complain that there was cork in her wine.

By the way, thanks for any comments, but these may take a day or so to appear, this is because the old blogger (me) has to moderate them, as apparently otherwise the blog fills up with adverts for viagra, Filipino brides etc. (That would be more interesting, I hear you say). And also it would allow all sorts of abuse to be heaped upon my head. And I get enough of that from the Missus.