Day: May 5, 2012

Well, I’ve been back in the UK since last Monday night during which I ended up sleeping in the cab of a truck, but more about that in a moment. The run-up to my house move on 26th April was a bit traumatic and incredibly tiring. For weeks beforehand I’d been de-cluttering and disposing of unwanted stuff by selling what I could on eBay, giving items away on Freecycle.org and, as a last resort, throwing stuff away at the local tip. Even then, as the moving day loomed on which I had to quit my old house, of course, there still seemed so much to pack or get rid of.

I’d reserved a 7.5 ton self-drive truck with a tail-lift for a week to get all the stuff I wanted to take with me down to Plazac and decided beforehand that I’d pick it up and load it the day before the move so as to relieve some of the pressure on me. What I didn’t account for was that despite the best laid plans, I’d be driving around the countryside for some of that time getting paperwork signed by my ex-wife and delivered to my solicitor in time to get the completion through and that I’d still as a result end up under tremendous time pressure.

I was incredibly grateful to receive the help of my mate Ken on the Wednesday who took me over to pick up the truck and then spent the whole of the day right up until the early evening helping me pack boxes and load them and the large, heavy items of furniture and kitchen appliances I was taking with me, into it for the journey south. I could never have done it by myself and I can’t thank him enough for all he did. I totally underestimated the number of boxes that I needed. I had previously got 17 large, strong boxes off eBay and thought they would be enough. In fact I had to get another 10 locally, that were even larger, together with 2 more rolls of bubble-wrap and ended up using all of them too! And all the time while we ferried stuff from house to truck it rained and rained 😐

On the Thursday I had the help of my son Brad. By that time I was beginning to flag and Brad did me the enormous favour of blindly throwing stuff away into ‘rubbish’ without showing it to me or worrying very much what it was! I needed that by then, actually. Colin the ‘white van man’ who took away the rubbish probably thought he’d struck treasure trove with a lot of the stuff he took away – more than 2 Transit vans-full – but I don’t begrudge him that in any way as he did it all for me as a favour and did me a great service as a result.

Late on Thursday afternoon Ashley, my buyer, and I ended up with our respective solicitors on hands-free on our mobile phones talking to each other to agree what they needed to get the completion done that day and I’m glad to say that they succeeded. I don’t think it would have happened though if we hadn’t resorted to forcing them to talk directly in the way that we did 😀

Come the Thursday afternoon and I still hadn’t booked a Channel crossing for the truck because of all the uncertainty. Because of the size and weight of the vehicle, I had to go out and back as a freight booking which meant going via Norfolk Line, which is now part of DFDS. I did the booking on my laptop and waited for the confirmation before finally packing my printer. It didn’t come and luckily I decided to phone DFDS to find out what was going on. They had no record of the booking but luckily we managed to sort it out and finally I was able to do my print out.

I’d hoped to get away by about 4pm on Thursday for a 10.45pm booking but it wasn’t to be just because of the sheer volume of stuff that I still needed to clear out. Brad worked tirelessly and I eventually managed to get away just after 10.00pm and then only because Ashley came round and kicked me out in the nicest possible way saying that he would get rid of the rubbish that I’d be leaving behind and that I didn’t have to bother. So thanks for that, Ashley.

I was much too late for my ferry booking of course, and was concerned that when I got to Dover, DFDS might hold me back for ages until they could get me on another one. I needn’t have worried though, because their service was impeccable on both the outgoing and the return crossings, the latter of which I also had to get reorganised at short notice, as I’ll explain later. I was loaded onto the 2.30am Dover to Calais ferry and drove out of the port the other side in the pitch dark at something like 5.30am local time. That was when I made my first, and I’m glad to say, only major cock up 🙁

I already had the route programmed into my sat nav from my previous trip down to Plazac so off I went. Unfortunately I’d failed to notice that for some reason the device had dropped its ‘recalculate automatically when off route’ setting and I put down the absence of the lady’s otherwise helpful advice to the fact that I was on the right route. I got a couple of indications that maybe things were not quite as they should have been. The first was that the ‘arrival time at destination’ shown on my sat nav was constantly increasing and this did slightly alarm me, but I thought that this might be down to it being so early in the journey. However, shortly after when the dawn began to come up, it was pretty obvious that the increasing brightness was far too much on my nose! And sure enough, it was, as then I began to see road signs indicating that Belgium was just down the road!

Now I hear you say, how can you possibly be so daft as to end up going totally the wrong way out of Calais, and let me tell you that it’s very easy at that time of the day, in pitch darkness, driving a large, unfamiliar diesel truck! I had been following the signs west towards Dunkirk but what I’d then done was miss a clover leaf at a road junction. And once you’ve done something like that, you don’t get many chances to rectify the mistake as there aren’t that many places where you can leave the road you’re on and turn round. But I did eventually and fortunately not a lot of harm was done as the actual mileage involved was not that great. And once I’d checked and reset the sat nav, off I went again. But this time, instead of taking me on my preferred route to the west, avoiding Paris, because of where I was starting from, I had no choice but to follow where my sat nav led me, south around the eastern side of Paris on the dreaded Peripherique 😐

The Peripherique at rush hour in the rain in a very large diesel truck is not the most attractive proposition, but it didn’t turn out to be too bad. Amazingly, apart from a small minority who seemed to have some kind of death wish and thought that it was quite OK to cut into the stopping distance in front of a very large truck at short notice, most drivers afforded me and the other much larger trucks that I found myself amongst, the respect they deserved. The constant stop-start was a little bit tedious but after a while I emerged on the south of the city and was able to continue my journey south.

Diesel fuel is much cheaper in France than in the UK but even so, the cost when I came to fill up further south was a shock to the credit card. And as I’d decided to keep to the autoroutes to save time, the additional peage costs also soon began to add up. But no matter, driving myself was still considerably cheaper than doing the move any other way and I just had to swallow whatever of such costs were thrown at me. And there were quite a few, let me tell you. I seemed to be constantly stopping and jumping out of my cab to run around to the left of the vehicle and stuff my card into yet another peage machine for the next bit of my journey south 🙂

Apart from stopping for fuel and to grab the odd snack, I drove constantly all day. The truck had a speedometer marked in km/hr and was governed like all the others in France to a speed of 90. This meant that you couldn’t build up speed on a down-grade so you could whizz up the other side. Instead, because of the weight on board, I was constantly changing down whenever I got to even the slightest up-hill stretch and was even being overtaken by some of the many giant trucks with trailers that had the power to pass me, sometimes at a mere snail’s pace that kept them alongside me for a minute or more! I felt like a real trucker at the end of it 😆

The day began to catch up with me, though, some distance south of the city of Limoges. By then my eyes were feeling very heavy and although I’d been on the mobile and given Bob an ETA, after I’d nodded off at the wheel three times, just for a moment each time mind, I knew it was time to stop for a break. I pulled into one of the many rest areas that you find every few kilometres along the major roads in France, arranged my sleeping bag under my back to give me a little bit of something to lie on and fell asleep within seconds.

I woke up after about an hour to the sound of my sat nav lady announcing that she was ‘recalculating route’ and after a brief trip to the loo, hit the road once more. The short break had done wonders for me and it didn’t seem that long before I was calling Bob up at Montignac to tell him when I’d be arriving at the house. We met up and all that was left for me to do that Friday was to park up ready to unload the next day. Unfortunately, because of my tiredness and carelessness, I managed to touch the guttering when reversing the truck into position in front of the house, but luckily the damage was not that great and will be easily fixed when I get in for good.

Saturday 28th April was a very productive day, despite it being cool, dull and damp, unseasonably so for the Dordogne at this time of the year. I had to sign some final papers at the estate agent’s in Montignac and open a French bank account. Then we managed to get in to see a new notaire who will hopefully be able to get behind the seller’s existing one, who is useless quite frankly and a total disaster, to push the purchase forward so I can get into the house as soon as possible. Having done that, Bob and Jude then gave me a hand to unload my stuff off the truck into the house which, as it had taken two days to load up, surprisingly only took a few hours to get off. And that was after Jude had very kindly given the inside of the house a clean-through as well, using stuff Bob and I had had bought at the local Leclerc supermarket a bit earlier.

In my plans, I’d allowed a couple of days for this so that left Sunday 29th April free. Bob and I went up to the piste so I could check MYRO, which was fine despite the large amount of rain that had fallen in recent days. Its wheels were invisible, though, because of the length of the grass and after strimming around MYRO quite a bit, Bob gave me a go to finish off. I’ve not used a petrol strimmer before and I now know that I’ll have to get one to clear the grass and scrub in my garden when I move in.

My original plan was to start the drive home on Tuesday 1st May but it seemed pointless to delay when I’d done everything I’d needed to. So I decided to leave on the Monday and return the truck on the Tuesday morning rather than on the Wednesday that the hire company had said would be OK. This time I did head around to the west of Paris, although funnily enough on a different route to the one I’d taken before, and having learnt the lessons from the outward journey, this time I stopped and rested three times when I felt tiredness overtaking me. DFDS were totally un-fazed when I arrived at Calais a day early! In fact, they said that as the departing ferry had been delayed, if I hurried I’d be able to get straight on, which I did despite having my empty truck searched by the French security! I was directed straight up the ramp and while I waited for directions on where to park by the loading crew, was told just to cut my engine where I was. So I did and the ferry door was closed behind me, and mine was the last vehicle to board.

The empty truck was searched again by the UK Border people but pretty soon I was on the M2 heading towards home, but this time I had no home to go to! So I found somewhere to park up, just like all the other truckers, made myself comfortable as best I could and fell asleep in the cab with the constant rain drumming on the roof. And surprisingly, I managed about 5 hours sleep, which felt wonderful afterwards!

I’m now ‘camping out’ in an empty house owned by a friend with little by way of heating and hot water but that’ll do me fine until I can leave for France for good in, hopefully, a few days time. I’m putting pressure on the estate agent and pushing to get access to my new house in Plazac even if between them the notaires haven’t managed to complete the Acte de Vente, by paying the full amount due for the purchase and the legal fees, into my notaire’s account. I’ve been assured that it will be possible, but typically they will not say by when. My confidence in the French system has, to say the least, been somewhat dented by these experiences. I’ll let you know what happens next – when it happens 😐