AllWays Traveller Features
To France on a Tank
Vitali Vitaliev and family, including his beach-loving dog Tashi, make an ice- and Covid-breaking foray to Northern France (and back to Hertfordshire where they live), having vouched to use no more than 42 litres of fuel
Additional reporting and photography by Christine Bohling
Lest you should be misled by the "tank" in the headline, let me reassure you straight away that I won't be talking about an invasion of France, no matter how peaceful, and "tank" in this case denotes not a heavy combat vehicle with a gun turret on top, but simply – a tank of petrol!
Yes, to break the thin post-pandemic ice that had been forming around our travel plans for 1.5 years, we (my wife, our Tibetan Terrier Tashi and moi) decided recently to undertake a 5-day-trip to France on just one tank of petrol, of which my small Toyota Yaris can accommodate about nine gallons (or 42 litres).
We were lucky to have filled up in advance, for on our departure date, fuel – for all sorts of reasons – could not be acquired for love or money at any of 8,380 Britain's petrol stations which made the whole country look like a small chunk of the late-1980s USSR on the brink of collapse…
The second reason for our trip (after "breaking the ice" that is) was my long-term obsession with the sandy beaches of Pas de Calais which, to me, were not that different from the stunning surf beaches of Tasmania – one of my favourite parts of the world. I wanted to see our dog Tashi run along those beaches for all he was worth and to imagine (at least for a moment) that we were in my beloved Tasmania, which, like the rest of Australia, was still firmly closed for all visitors.
Such was our trip's peculiar double whammy.
First three gallons
Tickets Booked – Tick, Covid Pass – Tick, Health Statement of Honour – Tick, Rabies jab Tashi – Tick, Animal Health Certificate – Tick, Passenger Locator Form – TBC, Covid test in France – TBC, Tashi's tapeworm treatment in France TBC, 2 day, Covid test on return to UK – booked in anticipation!
To catch an early Shuttle, we drove to Folkestone from our home in Hertfordshire on the eve of the departure along the semi-deserted M20. On arrival, we were rewarded with the sea view and the titillating smells of a barbecue being made on a beach in Sandgate by a group of gurkha soldiers, whose battalion is based there. Tashi in particular – and largely, as I suspect, due to the smells drifting towards his velvety black nose from the barbecue, appreciated his introduction to sea beaches, albeit the pebbly one in Sandgate was a pale shadow of the soft, golden-sand beaches on the other side of Channel…
The three clocks above the reception desk of Folkestone's Holiday Inn Express showed time in New York, Folkestone and Paris respectively. Looking at them we felt as if our ice-breaking journey had started already. Folkestone, where I had a chance to live for several years long before its recent 'regeneration', was no longer provincial and neglected. It was our post-lockdown gateway to France. And to the rest of the world too…
Boarding Le Shuttle next morning was unexpectedly easy. In no time, we were speeding through the tunnel – Tashi asleep in the back of the car.
Just under an hour's drive from Calais - and we were in our home for the next 4 nights - The Hermitage Hotel(Best Western) in Montreuil-sur-Mer. We were delighted to find out it was doggy friendly – Tashi's step and fluffy tail seemed to perk up extra high as he entered the hotel through the automatic swing doors onto the red carpet.
The hotel was human-friendly too. Our bright and spacious room had a panoramic view over the old Ramparts of the town, yet I was mostly impressed by the enormous, Pavarotti-sized bed and the bathroom towels of such unadulterated pristine whiteness that they would make the snow of the peaks of the Himalayas look dirty in comparison. Looking at them for over ten seconds was bound make you squint and bring tears to your eyes - a striking difference to 122 years ago, when, according to my faithful and dog-eared (Tashi-like) 1899 Baedeker Handbook to Northern France (I always travel with an antiquarian guidebook of at least 100 years of age which never fails to add the right time perspective to everything), French hotels were characterised by "the shameful defectiveness of the sanitary arrangements" and "soap" was "seldom or never provided". Everything in our en-suite bathroom was of such squeaky cleanliness that one could safely eat from its floor. And not just Tashi…
Next three gallons
To me, the most persisting iconic image of that 'ice-breaking' visit to France, still in the grips of the Covid pandemic, will be that of an elderly couple out for a breath of fresh iodine-saturated sea air in Le Touquet, Pas de Calais's premier resort. They sat on a bench, facing the sea, their faces all but hidden under the giant Covid masks, their chests heaving frantically under thick woolen scarves…
In just over 20 minutes from Montreuil-sur-Mer, which, despite its name, now lies on a silted-up river estuary twenty miles away from the actual sea, we found ourselves at beach at Le Touquet – named so from the original Picardy word for 'corner'. In Russia, they refer to a remote place as "a bear's corner". Le Touquet was certainly not remote and bears were nowhere to be seen. The only ursine (bear-like) creatures in the vicinity could be found in the colony of 100 grey seals in the Baie d'Authie near Berck.
Tashi was disappointed to find out that he wasn't allowed on the beach in Le Touquet, albeit several native canines, known locally as 'chiens', and their owners seemed to ignore this and kept trotting happily along the sand in defiance. As a well-mannered British dog, Tashi chose to conform with the rules, and to be walked instead along a promenade by the sand dunes.
We then drove to Stella Plage, Cucq, 10 minutes away, where dogs were allowed, and Tashi had a great time, with the sea breeze stirring his fur and sand tickling his omnivorous nose as he dashed along the endless Tasmania-like surf beach under the sky, dotted with the flying kites of different colours...
On the following day, we explored the no-less-striking beaches further up the coast. We had lunch at a dog-friendly seaside restaurant called La Brise by Plage d'Equihen. Imbibing – almost drinking in - the panoramic sea view, chased with Le marbre de foie gras au magret fume compote d'abricots, toasts and followed by Les taglietelles aux deux saumons, we were finding it hard to believe we were only a 30 minute car journey from Calais, with half a tank of petrol still intact!
On the way back, made a note of the exotic-looking nearby La Falaise camp site, with the ubiquitous, as if compulsory, free-of-charge sea views from everywhere, including both indoor and outdoor swimming pools for those who couldn't be bothered to walk down to the beach, as a possible stopping point, or even a base, for our next campervan trip to France.
To be fair, the sea and beach views were not quite 'free of charge', for they did not fail to charge our own lockdown-drained internal 'batteries' with the new energy of hope and wanderlust.
Tashi then romped happily again on the beach at Plage d'Equihen – jumping and digging with delight and rolling over in ecstasy amidst the shells and seaweed by the water's edge. We had to - literally- drag him away when it was time to visit the Hardelot Castle a few minutes away in Condette. The quirky 'joint' flag of France and Great Britain – a sign of Franco-British friendship, unperturbed by the ongoing fishing dispute, flew cheerfully in the wind above one of its towers as if waving good-bye to us and wishing us a happy journey back home.
Last three gallons
The night before departure, we had a small argument about the necessity to fill in our scary-sounding "Passenger Locator Forms", my point being that the very name of the Form did not make any logical sense, for by presenting it the passengers got themselves "located" already. My wife insisted on filling them in anyway, just to be on the safe side (she proved right, of course), with Tashi maintaining a wise Swiss-style neutrality inside our hotel room's capacious wall closet which he had converted into his private bedroom during the stay.
We spent our last morning shopping at the unbeatable cheese and wine shops of Montreuil-sur-Mer before loading the car up to make the short journey back to Le Shuttle at Calais, where they – rather unexpectedly (and in full accordance with the perverse "Passenger Locator Form" inventors' logic) charged us 11 Euros for "being in a different car from the one we arrived in"! So ridiculous and delusional it was that – being in a hurry - we chose to cough up the 11 Euros rather than argue with the notoriously inflexible French immigration officials and decided to treat that absurdly irrelevant payment as a kind of surcharge for the great time we had had in France. Our car was of course the same Toyota Yaris. It was the three of us who were indeed somewhat different from our own selves of 5 days ago: more rested, more smiley and much-much happier than before!
We came back home with just enough fuel at the bottom of the tank for a quick trip to a near-by Sainsbury's......
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