Wednesday 11 May 2022

 Like kids going on holiday we were awake at 5.30am and on our way by 6.30.  

The journey was uneventful but tedious because of road works but we arrived at Hatfield Forest in good time to give Perla a chance to pee or pooh or whatever she wanted. We ate a sandwich and walked a mile or so with her, and admired the ancient trees - evidently it is the best preserved royal hunting forest on the planet with over 1,000 acres of coppice and wood pasture. Henry I made it a royal hunting park but its history goes back much further. There is a herd of fallow deer somewhere in there but although we see the cows, and avoid their splashy droppings, we've never seen the deer. The forest came into the National Trust in 1924 and those ancient trees are well worth a visit. Lucky are they who walk their dogs there every day!

             The M25 was as it usually is - busy.  We were advised Junctions 8-11 of the M20 were closed and that we should follow deviations. So we did, and as DH put it, we saw a lot more of Kent than we had ever seen before. I think the lorries were stacked between the closed junctions, and seemed to be moving in relays – probably a Tunnel trainload at a time. We finally arrived at the Tunnel and got straight through to a train an hour earlier than we had booked. So we had time for a coffee and then on our way.

We took Perla to the park in Abbeville and then had dinner in the Ibis, with Perla beside us and enjoying an occasional piece of pasta from my Carbonara. Room 33 is my favourite, not only because it has a sort of Tardis bathroom in an egg shaped plastic bubble, but because it is located on a downstairs corner far away from reception, and with much less disturbance from those going to sleep much later than we did. 

We slept well, and admired the renovation that has been undertaken while the hotel suffered a forced closure due to the pandemic. The old hotel next door has vanished, and the grounds have been opened up and cleared. It always was a pleasant and convenient place to stay with crisp white sheets and duvets and it has improved during our absence.

Wednesday 13th we set off about 8am and trundled south through mist and banks of fog. Fog, in France! Unheard of! I’ve never been in April before and the trees are just budding, the verges are filled with cowslips and primroses – those lovely flowers we seem to have lost in England.

We scampered through Rouen but took a road we didn’t really want out of the city and then deviated all over the place – Evereux, Orleans, Blois, Tours, Limoges and then Angouleme, Brantome,  Perigeaux and south to the mill by about 5.30pm. A long two day’s driving for Bill since he won't let me drive any more after I fell asleep whist driving the yellow Honda. Michael Mosley has a word for it, but I can't remember what it was. The brain trying to catch up on lost sleep. 

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