Day 2 + 3 – Paris

The next day we road into Paris and located a campsite. We have not learned more than a few words of French, so resorted to eating at petrol stations and McDonald’s were we knew what was edible (well fairly edible anyway). So our first real French words were "Shake Chocolate" and "Grande Frites".


Trying to find directions to the Eiffel Tower


Sunny Paris from the Eiffel Tower


Versailles

We did some of the touristy things, like go up the Eiffel tower, see Versailles and the Louvre. It was so cold that it was only in the Louvre that we got feeling back to our limbs.

We managed to speak to one scooter rider on a Vespa 90 with a huge windscreen. He liked BA’s scooter (being a 200) and took it for a ride. We sat at the side of the road thinking, he has BA’s 200 and BA now has a 90, hmmm, not looking good. The guy came back so BA didn’t have to complete the journey a bit slower.


French Scooter

The temperature was so cold that we sleep the nights in the campsite in all our clothes, including wet weather gear. BA even slept in his helmet. We did our best to get warm in the campsite TV room and got really drunk to help keep out the cold, but it was pretty miserable. At least from now on we were heading south to warmer temperatures.

Day 1 - Farmers Field, France

22,451 miles on the clock to start with

Day 1 involved, getting up, getting fuel (and taking a photo of the odometer) and then finding our way to Dover. It was all a bit of a headspin, heading off into the unknown is like that and part of the fun.

We took the ferry from Dover and headed towards Paris. The first thing we learnt was how to avoid the toll roads. The second thing we learnt was everywhere was freezing. We drove till we got tired and then pitched our tents in a farmer's field at the side of the road. I had an army surplus sleeping bag, it was supposed to be waterproof but ended up being slightly warmer than sleeping in a plastic bin liner!