Travel

The Club Sandwich

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I think I might have said before that I do realise ‘tales from my holiday’ are something close to gloating and should be avoided.

However, unless you want to read my four page seminal work on how to sort and price a donation of books to Oxfam written this afternoon for new volunteers, this is all I have.

Arriving late into Lisbon, we had opted to stay the night there rather than get the hire car from somewhere in the airport and drive three hours across the country in the dark, to a place that barely registered on any map.

Last time, and for that matter the time before, we were in Lisbon we stayed in a lovely, posh hotel which was built into the castle walls. Suffice it to say, it had its own peacocks.

(On one stay there, we had a bodyguard.

Actually, he was guarding my husband, not me, as he pointed out when I said that he must be tired and we would be perfectly alright on our own.

I could, it seems, have wandered across the city on my own risking all sorts but as long as the best beloved was protected to the very door of the very nice hotel, all was right in the world.)

This time it was a chain hotel near-ish to the airport and that -ish later became important.

We arrived to a very polite and friendly welcome and settled into the bar area and ordered a club sandwich.

Now a good club sandwich is a nice thing and the benchmark for us was set by a hotel in Reading, yes really.

We had arrived, do stop me if I have told you this before, footsore, hungry and weary after train chaos on the way back from watching rugby in Cardiff and unable to use any form of public transport to get us further towards Petersfield.

It was about 10pm and we had no luggage, but the receptionist promptly produced a pair of toothbrushes – and that was a very nice gesture.

Room service, she told us, could rustle up a club sandwich, a beer and a glass of white wine.

So we went to our room. It had a huge bed, a good film on the telly and minutes later the best club sandwich (with good chips) arrived – it was all very good indeed.

( I may have overused the word good, but really it was!)

So, back in Lisbon, the club sandwich was fine, but not a patch on Reading.

Now, the receptionist had told us there was a taxi strike the next day but all we needed to do was to call down when we got up and by the time we had showered and got dressed a, presumably strike-breaking, taxi would appear and all would be well.

I did have a moment’s thought about black-legging but I compared that to lugging cases around the public transport system and swallowed it.

Next day, however it turned out there were a lot fewer strike-breakers than would have been ideal in the circumstances.

We were advised by the day shift receptionist that we should take the metro. Now that would have been OK if not for the fact that as we left the hotel there was a airport shuttle minibus about to set off.

The night receptionist had failed to mention this fact and therefore to advise us to book a seat. There were no seats available for hours.

I won’t bore you with a minute by minute account of the Lisbon metro ( it is fine, really) and will just mention that there are signs in all the carriages explaining, in a variety of languages, smoking was prohibited.

But the English translation was ‘No Smokers!’

A bit harsh I thought, and how could they be sure of every passenger’s personal habits. But maybe it explained why in the face of a taxi strike, the trains were surprisingly empty on the last leg to the airport.

Going on Holiday

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I’m sure that a ‘what I did on my holidays’ is one of the lowest forms of blogging but that seems to be pretty much all I have done for the last few weeks – and yes, I do know that boasting about your holidays is also pretty low too.

Anyway, should you want to skip a few blogs on the basis that this is not for you, feel free, but here goes with some holiday notes.

Packing used to be one of my skills. When I was young, oh so many years ago, I had a job which demanded a lot of travelling and so could pack a neat bag with all the necessary requirements for any situation in about 10 seconds flat.

Now, oh so many years later, I am hopeless. I over-pack and come home with a lot of unused but badly creased stuff, or I pack the wrong things and shiver or sweat, or I take all the wrong earrings.

As a woman who likes her jewellery (let me tell you about the Accessorize necklace which was smuggled out of Russia during the revolution, sometime,) I do like to have the right bits with the right clothes.

Anyway, as the holiday before last, we were glamping, the choices were fairly easy and indeed you do need things you can pull on the tramp across wet grass for the first pee of the morning. And stuff which you can get off easily and hang up to avoid getting it wet on the shower floor.

This last holiday (a few days in Normandy) was a bit trickier not least as we have a rough and ready attitude to planning.

We get a guide book or (some) off the shelf, book a crossing or a flight, get a car or take ours and that is it as far as planning goes.

The flight or channel-crossing are the times to look in the books and decide what to do.

(This has worked well for us on the whole, but it has meant some rather dodgy accommodation – as well as amazing places to stay – remind me to tell you about dinner with the Mafia in Sicily sometime.)

We decided to drive down past Rouen and stay in a place called Conches, recommended in our old Rough Guide to France.

All was fine. (French motorways are a delight compared to ours. Their surfaces are nice, they are quiet and people generally use lane discipline – what more can I say.)

We found a Logis and although the room was basic and there were a lot of dried flowers about the place, the food was lovely.

Though I have to say that in Normandy it is a choice of whether to have cream with your cheese or cheese with your cream – not exactly on-plan when you are supposed to be losing weight, but hey ho.

Over dinner, we got out an Alistair Sawday guide to France dating from 2010 which had appeared from somewhere on our shelves back home.

There was an entry for a B&B run by a woman who used to be an antiques dealer – that was enough for me. I like a woman who has spent her life around Brocantes and would watch Antiques Roadshow religiously if they had it in France.

It turned out to be in a very nice but isolated village ( see all of inland Normandy) and there was a collection of houses in a large garden.

Our large room had a (very large) en suite bathroom with walls covered (very interestingly) in striped, bright orange silk.

We had our own dinning room where we were served a very nice three course meal on both nights, with very nice bottle of wine and Calvados to take to bed – all of six steps away….. and it came in at the princely sum of 200 euros all in for both of us, and the dog, for two nights. Not bad at all.

Now, I must say that I am a fan of the Rough Guide but I do take issue with them on one point.

There was mention of a Monday market at a town called Vimoutiers. There was also mention of a Richard the Lionheart castle the other side of the region.

One morning over breakfast we had a sotto voce tiff over whether to walk up to the castle and get some exercise or to go to a French market – I do like a market.

In the end we agreed to do both though it involved several hours of driving.

Castle, fine, as described and indeed lovely views. (There is some historical debate about whether those who finally took it came in through the toilet or an open chapel window and it takes no time at all to think about which would be preferable in a Medieval castle.)

Market, not so fine. I should have realised that a market on a Monday was unlikely but the French will have a market at the drop of a hat, so it should have been OK. Infact it was a market but of the tattiest bling market clothes you ever did see. Not a fresh fruit or veg in sight. Thank God, I agreed to do the castle or I would never have heard the last of it.

And it was the market that lowered that bit of Normandy from a promising B to a C+ and in fairness, a lot of the blame for that lies at the door of the Rough Guide.

A is a place you would move to at the drop of a hat. B is a place which you wouldn’t be sorry to be sent to. C is a place which would cause a deep intake of breath, but you know you could make the best of despite a few things which are not at all right, and D is the equivalent of being sent to Walsall or indeed Warsaw.

I am sure everyone has those kinds of ratings and you probably didn’t need to know mine, but I give them in a spirit of generosity to anyone who has made it to the end of this bit of tales of my holidays. Thank you

Going

Maps

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I like maps but I have the same attitude to them as I have with many (most) things – a quick glance, an overall impression, not too hot on the detail.

Once he and I, living in Brussels, decided to fly to Nice, take a bus to the Italian border and walk through the ‘hills’ to his friends’ home in a small village ‘nearby’ called St Jeannet.

I got out the map the night before we went and plotted a few day’s journey with backpacks and said it would be easy to find somewhere to stay at along the way, day by day – there were lots of little hamlets and villages we could easily reach.

On the first day we did the flight, did the bus (gawping at Monaco, albeit briefly from the bus window) and got off just before the border.

There we made our mistake – we sat down and had a splendid French lunch. Now, when you have backpacks with all your belonging for several days and a reasonable way to go, this was not such a smart move.

But hey ho, we had looked at the map – or at least I had – and I knew it was only a few kilometres and the weather was lovely.

I had not looked at the contours on the map – or at least not looked closely.

We trotted down and crawled up no end of ‘hills’ to our destination for the night which was St Agnes.

At last we saw the sign which told us we were there. But, oh so sadly, we were not. The sign for St Agnes is about two kilometres downhill from the real village – which at that stage, felt like a very long way to walk uphill.

Anyway we got there and found somewhere to stay. It was very, very good to take those backpacks and boots off and pad upstairs, yes upstairs, to have something to eat.

Suffice it to say, the next morning when I woke and drew back the curtains, the cloud level was below our window sill.

(Remind me some other time, dear reader, to tell you of the lunch on the beach with French ladies of a certain age, Him sleeping in Renoir’s bed and other stuff from this adventure, but now back to maps.)

So, back to maps.

The best beloved had found out that Ordnance Survey can now produce a real, paper map for you, based on your home.

I don’t know how it works exactly, but today one arrived.

It looks like a proper Ordnance Survey map, and indeed is, but the cover picture is one we took. It has West Harting, Navel of the World, as its title. How cool is that?

Of course, I opened it, gave it a quick glance, saw that our house was on the fold, told Him how brilliant it was, and it is.

And of course and will hand it over to Him for a closer look because I don’t do that.