17th – 21st June
This trip, we chose to travel south on Friday afternoon, staying over in Portsmouth before catching the ferry on Saturday morning.
We anticipated a troublesome journey, but there was much less traffic than expected, with the only major hold-up around Birmingham, but we were not in a rush as we only had a hotel to catch.
On our last trip, we passed the aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, berthed in the harbour. This time, it was HMS Queen Elizabeth, which had replaced it. Each ship is guarded by two police launches, which makes me wonder why, given the fact that they are huge, state of the art defensive bits of kit, they cannot defend themselves.
I always find the exit from Portsmouth harbour interesting, with all the naval vessels and the historic buildings.
The contrast of driving in the UK and France, never ceases to amaze.
A flat calm crossing on an on-time ferry (in contrast to the last time we did this journey), meant that we left the port in France at around 4pm. Unfortunately we were travelling on one of the hottest days of the year and we arrived at the house at 11.30pm, pretty hot and exhausted. The temperature at one of the Aires we stopped at for a bite to eat, was 40 degrees!!!
On arrival we parked under the car-port, but in the dark did not realise how much growth there had been on our grape vine. It was a bit of a surprise the following morning.
Sunday morning saw us doing some shopping for essentials, then returning to attack the triffid and uncover the pool, which was in great shape, no sign of green algae.
On Monday evening, there was a sudden, very severe electrical storm. We had already had a brief shower of large hailstones (about half an inch diameter). After our neighbour had waved us a warning, and we had taken in the garden furniture for safety, the wind got stronger and we witnessed the squall tear away the upper part of our other neighbour’s tree which landed through the hedge and onto the barbecue, breaking the top in half.
We have witnessed a few severe electrical storms over the years which in France, some lasting for hours, and they are always entertaining. This was a new experience though.
The tree had not only landed on our hedge, but it also completely blocked the space between our two properties. In our garden alone, it took 4 trailer loads to shift it.
Given the severity of the storm, we had a look at our friend’s house on the far side of Montpon to see if all was well there. It was; it looked no more dishevelled than usual, so we assumed all was well. Fortunately, Jeeves had removed the top of the tree which was threatening to fall onto the house, the last time they were there.
"See-u-Later" 