Category Archives: francilienne

Friday 13th May 2016 – NOW, THAT’S MORE LIKE IT!

Last night, I dropped off to sleep during the middle of one of the Boris Karloff “Mr Wong” films, and apart from a trip down the corridor in the small hours, that was all that I remember until 06:25. It was one of the best nights’ sleeps that I’ve had since I left France and I enjoyed it so much.

I’d been on my travels too, playing bass in a rock band somewhere and we had a concert to play, part of a huge music festival. And although we were set up and ready, our drummer (a friend of mine from way back) hadn’t turned up. He hadn’t sent a message or anything to say where he was or what he was doing, and because we weren’t therefore ready, our spot at this festival was slowly being whittled away by the organisers. And with him being my friend, my bandmates were having a little whittle at me about it. Everything was here from this drummer – his tent, his drums, even the roller skates for his roller skate hire business – everything except him.

So breakfast all eaten and done long before the alarm went off, a nice warm shower and clean clothes long before 08:30, even time to spend on doing some more blog updating before hitting the road at 09:30. And I apologise to Pellenberg for some of the things about it. Not because they aren’t true, but because it’s only half the price (like €10:00 per night) to stay here. I’m prepared to put up with the inconvenience at €10:00 per night.

First stop was the bank, where I had business to perform. And I learnt a thing or two there that I didn’t know either and that made me feel bettertoo. And afterwards, I went to LIDL where I bought myself a set of three new toys – some 800mm (massive) SDS drill bits, 16, 18 and 24mm, at €9:00 (for three, not for one) and these are so impressive.

Next stop was to Spit. This is a charity shop in Leuven that sells books, records, clothes and tons of furniture. It’s huge and full of stuff and I spent a pleasant hour in there looking for stuff. Not buying anything, of course, just looking. But I could have bought several items had I been of such a mind. There was some good stuff in there.

Lunch was at the fritkot at the Jacobsplein, and then off to the hospital for my check-up.

I gave a blood sample and it came back as 8.1. And that, surprisingly, is quite stable for the last couple of weeks. In fact, since I’ve been undergoing treatment, the blood count hasn’t dropped below 7.8. They reckon that I can go for a week without a transfusion because they are keen to see how I hold up. I explained that I’ll be doing a lot of driving but they seem to think that I’ll be fine.

I do like their optimism.

So they heaved me out at 16:00 – minus the transfusion – and I hit the road for home. And I don’t mean “home” as in Pellenberg but “home” as in the Auvergne because I’m coming back for a week. I need more clothes, more books, more stuff in general if I’m to stay here until September and I reckon I should grab it while the grabbing is good. My next appointment is Monday 23rd so I have a little 10-day window to do it.

But it was horrendous coming back. Totally horrendous. The traffic queue started just outside Leuven and lasted until well after Valenciennes. And then there were all kinds of perturbations on the Francilienne. All in all, a journey of less than 4 hours to Melun took just under six hours to complete. Ironically, before I set out, I was toying with the idea of going back via the old road to Auxerre but I reckoned the motorway would be less stressful.

Ohh woe is me!

If this isn’t bad enough, the Première Classe Motel where I’m spending the night (in view of my state of health I’m doing the trip back in easy stages and in comfort) isn’t actually in Melun, it’s in the neighbouring commune. However, there’s a street of the same name in Melun so that when you programme the street name and “Melun” into your GPS like someone around here did, you end up in the middle of some rather insalubrious council estate somewhere. That took me a good 20 minutes to sort myself out.

But as the legendary Marechal MacMahon once said – “j’y suis, j’y reste” or “here I am and here I’ll stay”. Or as Martin Luther put it – “hier stehe ich – ich Kann night anders” or “I’m staying here – I can’t do anything else”.

I’ve had enough for one day.

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Tuesday 23rd July 2013 – WELL I MADE IT

And if you ask me very nicely, I’ll make you one like it too – which is a story that I have told before, but don’t let that worry you.

I left home just after 21:00 – stopped for 5 minutes at the Carrefour at Montmarault to drop a little fuel in (I was going to fuel up at the Carrefour in Riom earlier but of course we went in Liz’s car instead), then 15 minutes at Melun for a total refuel and a stretch of the legs.

I arrived here at 04:05, which has to be something of a world record seeing as how it’s about 732kms. Good old Caliburn.

But I cheated really, because I’ve abandoned my traditional route over the mountains and despite the péage, these days I’m doing it all on the motorway.

Well, not quite.

I’m leaving the motorway at Fontainebleu, passing around the town and heading for Melun where there is a cheap petrol station, and then onto the N104 – the Francilienne – at the other side of the city.

That cuts a huge chunk off the journey and completely misses out the suburbs of Paris. It’s much less stressful and I’ve had enough stress right now.

Except of course when someone in a Porsche Cayenne is overtaking a long line of traffic, sees the radar, slams on his brakes and cuts in right in front of me. He got both barrels of Caliburn’s horn and when he pulled alongside me to … errr … remonstrate with me, he got what can best be called an “offensive gesture” too.

I was in no mood for messing about.

Anyway, I can’t believe that I left the apartment in Belgium in such a tip. I really don’t know what happened. It was as if I had been chased out by zombies and if Marianne had seen how it looked, she would have turned in her grave.

I went more-or less straight to bed and then up at 11:30, and a leisurely day recuperating. And also doing two big machine-loads of washing.

Now everyone makes mistakes of course, but what counts in life is how you get out of them. And here’s an object lesson in dealing with issues.

Tuesday night is cheapo night in the pizza place down the road – all medium pizzas at €5:95 and as I didn’t feel like cooking after all of my exertions, down I went and ordered a Country Vegetable without cheese.

When I returned (having picked up some wooden crates on the way back) I found that they had given me a ham pizza with cheese by mistake, so I rang them back to complain.
“Ahh – it’s you who had the ham pizza then. What’s your address?” which I duly told him.
5 minutes later the manager was round with my pizza. “I made you a large one, to make up for the inconvenience” he said, so I put some cheese on it and ate it all, musing to myself that “that’s how you get out of an embarrassing situation”.

Yes, hats off to them.

So an ealy night. It’ll be a day or two before I recover from the jet-lag.

Luckily tonight, I found Marianne’s cooling fan. And I needed it too.

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Thursday 8th December 2011 – IT TOOK ME LONGER …

… to drive the final 40kms from the motorway service area to my supplier’s this morning than it did to drive from my house to the motorway service area last night.

Well, okay, it didn’t. But the two hours that I spent on the road certainly felt like it. Heavy traffic was one reason, but the other reason was that I had to drive down a long tunnel and The Lady Who Lives In The Satnav lost her bearings.

It took quite a while to organise myself there, but the fun started on the way back.

That took absolutely ages.

Firstly the The Lady Who Lives In The Satnav tried to send me down a peage with a height limit of 2 metres and so that was out. And from then on it kept on finding me impossible routes that led back to where I started.

Eventually I followed my nose out west along the Seine until I hit the Francilienne – the N104 – and then south until I hit the N7 to Fontainebleu – a long way round but it brought me home. And during all of this of course we had the traffic.

The road goes through the Forest of Fontainebleu and it’s quite a busy road used by any amount of truckers. And in each entry to each glade along the route there were … errrr … filles de joie in place waiting. I’ve not noticed that before

But now I’m home and exhausted. I’m off to  a nice clean bed and tomorrow I’ll unload Caliburn.

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Tuesday 26th July 2011 – NEXT MORNING …

… saw me in IKEA where they had sold out of everything interesting and so instead I went to Marianne’s.

After lunch we took a pile of my old stuff down to the Charity Shops and then we went to Brico to buy a pile of cable to rewire all of her internet connections, and that took me most of the afternoon.

At 19:20 precisely I left Brussels, maybe for the last time as I now have no reason to be back there, and headed off home.

And I was glad to leave, I can tell you. Charity shops refusing goods, and refusing them with a sneer and an offensive remark, large vans deliberately turning into your path when they can see you coming, and the final straw was the brand-new Range Rover that tried to run me down on a zebra crossing. Yes, by that time I had really had enough and now I’m wondering how that Range Rover driver will be explaining the large size 9-sized dent in his rear wing.

Yes, I was in a bad mood when I left.

The journey home was exciting. The Lady Who Lives In The Satnav predicted that I would arrive home at 03:51, and I was home at … errr …. 03:50 precisely.

And that was quite a surprise, and for several reasons.

  1. She took me down a completely different route – the Mons by-pass, then the N2 via Soissons to the Francilienne, and then round via Melun, Fontainebleu and the RN7. She also wanted to send me via Nevers and Moulins but I took the short cut via Bourges.
  2. old cars panhard levassor franceI made a few unscheduled stops along the way. One of the stops, not too far beyond Mons but in France was this absolutely gorgeous thing that I saw.

    It’s been absolutely ages since I’ve featured any nice and interesting old cars in my postings, so it’s high time that we showed you another one. This is an original Panhard-Levassor and I think that it might be a CS model from the early 1930s – not that I know too much about it. But whatever it is, it is beautiful – it really is

  3. Another unscheduled stop was at Melun where at the ELF garage there – the cheapest in France, diesel was at 129.9. That called for a major fuel-up.
  4. and then we had the road works. The way out of Brussels was full of them, as was the Francilienne. I calculated that I lost about 15 minutes at least in that lot. And there were also road works on the roads between Gien and Bourges and that slowed me down quite a lot as well. In fact, along that stretch of road I started to fall asleep. It had been a long day

But apart from that, I didn’t stop at all – not even for food or coffee (luckily at Marianne’s I had made a big mug of coffee in my thermal mug). I was in a hurry to return home.

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