Tunnelling in the time of Covid

 So, log in to frequent traveller account, select crossings, click okay.  

There's a but coming

First of all, you have to be double vaccinated.  Okay, we all are.  Can we prove it?  Yes, we have letters from the NHS.   The Douanier at Folkestone checked them.  Stamped our passports.  That stamp is a Brexit thing, I think.  

When we get to France, we may have to prove that we are vaccinated to get into bars and restaurants.  The app to download is TousAntiCovid.  It didn't want to scan in our vaccination certificates.  But we were not planning on eating out anyway - the paperwork will do the job

And then we have to come back to the UK.  

Three days before we leave France, we need to get a test.  (Edit: this is no longer needed, they changed the rules).  Check out your nearest test provider at www.sante.fr. There are three pharmacists in our village which do it.  And you need documentary proof to load up to Eurotunnel.  I'm told it is wise to make an appointment.  We made an appointment.

The procedure was pretty straightforward.  Slightly different from the UK where they stick a cotton wool bud in your throat, then up your nose - the French pharmacist just does your nose.  It tickles.  Into a little tube of some sort of chemicals - could be tap water for all I know.  Then a drop of liquid into a little test unit.  One line and you test negative, two for positive.  We all come out negative

And two days after we return, we need to get tested again.  Despite paying my share of the £37 billion budget, the NHS tests are not good enough, apparently.  The government has a list of private test providers.  Cheapest is £20 a head, which is great if you live in Kendal and can turn up to their offices.  That firm charges £89 a head otherwise for the postal service.  

Other firms on the list are cheaper.  £28 for postal service seemed the best.  The website for that firm had a bug and wouldn't accept my order.  

So the £48 a head place.  I bought it, they sent me an email to register my details, and when we came back the test kits were waiting in the porch.  We tested ourselves and sent them off

A few days later, wife's results came back negative

Son: negative

Me: er, looks like they lost me

I emailed them to ask - no response.  I found a phone number online and rang.   Joshua listens to my story and bungs me a refund.  Thanks Joshua!

It's a bit worrying, of course.  I am sure they are busy, but to lose one out of three samples, apparently with nobody checking or being aware?

The International Driving Licence

 So I need to renew my international driving permit.  We were supposed to leave the EU last year so I obediently got one last October.  Unlike my proper EU driving licence, it only lasts a year.  Can you spot the problem?

So it turns out that I need a passport photo.  The machine only takes cash.  I don't have a £5 note.  

I go to buy some vitamins in Boots for £4.99

They don't have a £5 note either

I queue up for a coffee in Costa.  Hooray!  They do

I sit and drink my coffee, and scan a QR code to identify myself

So, off to the photobooth

Photo taken

It looks identical to the one from last year, but I'm not allowed to re-use that one.  

Back to the Post Office

Hand over the old licence, the new photos

Bloke looks at it.  

Still two years to go, he says!

It's a three year licence, not one year!

Argh!

Travelling to France In the Time of Covid-19

 So, first visit to France since lockdown, and it is reassuringly normal.  Cafés and restaurants are quiet, and almost everyone is wearing a mask.  Rather charmingly, the signs outside the Intermarché supermarket in the nearby town say Venez Tous Masqués - rather as if they were holding a formal masked ball...

We visit a small village where at the busiest of times we see about two people, so isolation isn't a problem.  Perhaps in Antibes there are crowds of people thronging the beaches (this is France in the summer holidays after all).  But not in La France Profonde.  It doesn't get much deeper than our village.   

The British Government, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that on our return to plague-stricken Blighty we need to quarantine ourselves for two weeks.  Frankly, that's a minor irritation - we were doing that anyway, pretty much.  

An email arrives:

You are not allowed to cross unless you have completed the online form available here  

It is important that you have the registration number provided after completion of the form with you when you arrive at our terminal in France.

Well, I fill in the form.  It isn't onerous, but it's a bit vexing that I have to do a separate form for everyone in the family, and there is no way of copying it.  I tell them to contact me by SMS as we have lousy phone reception in the UK (we live in a valley)

Do they contact me by SMS?  Of course they don't. They telephone me and leave a message on my voicemail.  However, there is no way to return their call.  They phone me three times in all, and the last time they tell me they will send an SMS.  The SMS arrives to ask me if I am self isolating. Yes, I reply, resisting the urge to apply emphatic invective.  

Two days later a police officer arrives at the back door to ask if we are self-isolating.  Rather a waste of police time, I suspect.  The copper looks at his mobile phone and sees that what a surprise, there is no signal.  

It doesn't convince me that the British government knows what it is doing.

Coronavirus Blues

So here we are, frequent tunnellers, and unable to go to France. Oh, I can understand why, and I'm not complaining.  It's just that I miss France.  We usually go over for the weekend once a month in the winter, once every 2/3 weeks in summer.  We have in theory got 10 days booked at the end of June.  It isn't looking very likely.  The trains are running, but the French would turn us away

Here's the official Eurotunnel page

You may be turned away by the French Authorities if you don't have good reason to travel within France. They have advised us that they will only allow travel for the following reasons:

• Going home to a main residence
• Essential work in France
• Medical staff

NO HOLIDAYS OR SOCIAL VISITS

They don't mention mowing the lawn, but somehow I don't think I would get away with that.  I will probably find it waist high anyway, so needing a scythe rather than a mower.  

Good news is that Eurotunnel appear to be cool about extending your tickets - we go often enough that there is little chance of hitting the year long expiry date, and you can easily rebook at no charge, which is what we shall probably have to do.  I dare say if your tickets are due to expire, they will be willing to extend.  You might have a job getting through though

Tesco vouchers too - the Tesco website says no refunds or exchanges, but that pre-dates Coronavirus.  I contacted them by online chat to ask about some cinema tickets that were due to expire - absolutely no problem at all just crediting the points back to my account.  

Only problem now is that pretty soon I am going to have to buy wine at UK prices - I haven't done that for 15 years!

A foretaste of Brexit

Coming back from France on Sunday afternoon I left the motorway at Folkestone Services to get the newspaper.  Come back out and they have closed the access to the M20!  We try to follow the diversion signs.  We go round and round the roundabouts, looking for the Black Spot - it isn't there.  
So we head west - through the B-roads of Kent by guesswork.  We pitch up in Ashford  where they are building a new junction

Apparently the motorway is closed  between junctions  9-11, closed both ways so that they can build this junction.   Well I think it is a temporary closure until 0600 on Monday morning.  A bit of a nightmare.  Kent residents might possibly be a bit miffed at having a zillion cars and lorries diverted through their villages.  Have these people never heard of the contraflow?

Brocantes

Brocante.  
Rederie
Braderie
Vide grenier
Lots of words all meaning that the village turns out and flogs off its junk. 

There is at least one brocante every Sunday morning, if you are prepared to drive.  You don't  usually have to drive far. 

Two or three weeks beforehand  a crop of little roadside signs go up.  Brocante.  Name of village.  Date.  Sometimes you have never heard of the village.   Where on earth is Yvrencheux?  Sailly-Flébeaucourt?  Vacqueriettes-Erquières?  Usually it is quite hard to make out the detail - when? where?   Occasionally the organisers are aware of this and put up three A4 signs - Brocante.  Fontaine-l'Étalon.  19 Juin.  But usually it is a single sign,  and driving by at a moderate 70kph it is impossible to read it all.  Pass by a few times and you might get it.  Or perhaps you are supposed to stop your 2CV and read it.

Assuming you find the village and get there on the right day, what will you find?  First sign is a row of cars parked up on the grass verge.  Both sides.  The French love this stuff, and frankly there isn't a lot on in rural France on a Sunday morning.  St Louis' church opens for mass maybe once every six Sundays.  There are probably no pavements so there will be families walking along the single lane between the cars.  You might as well park up somewhere half a mile away and walk in like them. 

Every house in the village, pretty much,  takes this opportunity.   They are decluttering.  You are collecting new clutter.  They put a trestle table outside the gate.  Sometimes just an old bedsheet on the ground.  Then spread out their stuff.  Grown out of kiddies clothes and toys.  Grown out of biker gear and helmets.  Scythes and similarly mediaeval agricultural implements.   Ornaments.  60s Johnny Halliday albums.  Videos, DVDs,  CDs.   Hand painted plates.  Tarnished cutlery.  Relics of ancient holidays in Morocco.   Outboard motors.  Beer glasses.  Books, many obviously never read. 

There are a few professionals here - people who are selling leather belts, sunglasses, heavy metal tee shirts - but it is mostly the neighbours.  There is a lot of strolling and chatting.  This is la France profonde.

The Ramparts of Montreuil sur Mer

It isn't Sur Mer any more, but be careful to tell your satnav it is or you will get directed to the Montreuil in Paris or even Switzerland.  

The town is on a hilltop dominating the surrounding countryside.   And at some point they have been to a lot of trouble to make their hilltop hard to attack.  The walls rise up sheer from the low lying fields. 

The ramparts surrounding the town are almost perfect.  One breach allows traffic though into the town.  There is another access road which enters through a gateway.  

And those ramparts are scary.  No namby-pamby health and safety fencing.   You are 30 metres up.  Fall off and you die.  I stay as close to the inside edge of the path as I can.  I'm not particularly scared of heights you understand.   I just prefer not to fall to my death if it's all the same to you. 

There is a complex arrangement of ditches and outlying fortresses.  I think the idea is that if an invading army breaks through the walls, they find themselves trapped in a ditch with the Montreuillois pouring boiling oil over them. 

The town is on the inside of those mediaeval wall. And for the most part it's a higgledy piggledy mediaeval town of small houses and narrow streets.  There are a couple of more modern tenements which look like barrack blocks, and certainly out of place.  A place to wander.