Paris

Then something very strange happened… we decided to sell Baloo. After four years and some great adventures, it is time to move on. We are still going to travel but without a truck. First job was to get unpacked. We brought Baloo back to the UK on the Eurotunnel. This is a cost effective way to get a truck sized motorhome across the English Channel. Eurotunnel have a simple charging scheme with just a single rate for motorhomes. Baloo was a bit of a squeeze but everything worked out. We arrived, on a typically overcast English morning, at Folkstone and set off north.

England is possibly one of the worst countries in Europe for travelling in a motorhome. Wild camping is technically illegal and in practice quite difficult. Quiet areas by the road are few and far between. Chances are that if you find somewhere then before long somebody will turn up to tell that you cannot stay. Even an overnight at a motorway service station will cost you £25 or a substantial fine. You really need to book somewhere to stay for every single night. Campsites are pretty hopeless for a truck like Baloo. The conversation generally goes fine until you mention 20 tons of 6×6 at which point the campsite owner thinks of what will happen to their nicely mown grass. Another option is “Britstops”. This is a scheme where places let you stay for free but hope that you will visit their pub, shop, café or whatever. There is a guidebook you can buy and sticker to show that you subscribe to the scheme however few locations take this too seriously. We used the “Park4Night” app (highly recommended) and after a few phone calls found a pub that was not put off by a 11.5m vehicle.

Next day we arrived at my sister’s house and unloaded everything from Baloo into a storage unit. From there we drove to Hull, took the ferry to Europoort, and finally drove to the Unicat workshop in Dettenheim. Unicat are the only company that can sell Baloo. We said a few goodbyes and a couple of hours later were on the TGV from Karlsruhe to Paris.

We had used Airbnb to book at apartment in Paris. My main stipulation was that it should have air conditioning. Paris was going to be hot and I am a creature of the cold. We met Olivier, our host, at the address. He was clearly a man in a hurry and promptly took us to another address two doors down. “For security” he explained. Although this explained nothing to me. Diane was bundled into an extraordinarily tiny lift with our luggage and I tried to keep up with Olivier as he leapt, antelope like, up five flights of stairs. Lost him at the third and finally arrived at the apartment just after Diane. We were given a whistle-stop tour of the apartment and then he was gone. The apartment was nice enough and quite spacious. There was no air conditioning. Just windows. It was too late to do anything about this. The week was quite hot, for me, but we survived.

Paris was wonderful. We kicked back, chilled out and did some very ordinary tourist things. The Bateau Mouche took us up and down the Siene river accompanied by several hundred school children. They discovered that if they screamed when the boat when under a bridge then the echoes made for a very loud noise. There was a pre-recorded sightseeing commentary but we never got to hear more than a couple of words before the next bridge would arrive. We hopped on and off the hop-on, hop-off open top bus and spent a lot of time sitting at pavement cafes sipping wine or coffee. One evening we saw the show at the Moulin Rouge. I have never seen so many bare boobs at one time. It was quite remarkable. Very expensive but worth a visit once in your lifetime. Possibly the high-light of Paris was a frantic drive with Max and his retro style sidecar. This was terrific fun and felt pretty cool as well. After a week we treated ourselves to a night in an air conditioned room near the Gare du Nord railway. It was blissfully cool. Next day we hopped on the train to Amsterdam.