12 Days, 4 Countries, 2 Women, 1 Car (and 1 drivers licence) - Mum Diaries #5

Log Five, May 18: The drive from Sheffield, UK to our B&B in Bauvais, France was a fairly big one! About 8.5 hours including the time we were lost trying to find our hidden gem-of-a-hotel. Mum did amazingly well! She really kept her cool when a few things went wrong. Getting from our home in Sheffield to the Channel Tunnel in Dover was easy, what we weren’t expecting was; the 200 pound ticket to get our car onto the Channel Tunnel train (highly recommend purchasing your tickets in advance), my phone network to stop accessing signal – meaning no Google Maps – and lastly, you had to drive on the RIGHT SIDE of the road! We hadn’t done an ounce of research before leaving. We assumed the toll over to France would be a reasonable price (wrong), I assumed my mobile network, 3 (three) would work in Europe because it was a European provider (wrong again), and we obviously assumed that traffic drove on the left side. Thank goodness for the announcement when exiting the train that said “please remember to drive on the right side of the road”, otherwise that would have been a dangerous surprise.

<<right side of road, wrong side of car

Mum had an international mobile sim card but her phone wasn’t a smart phone, and our phones held different sized sim cards so we couldn’t swap them. We managed to follow signs to Bauvais before phoning the family whose home/B&B we were staying at to ask for directions. We were close, all we had to do was drive a little while out of town and we’d see a black sign to our right with the B&B’s name on it… do you think we could find that little black sign? Of course not! We had driven back-and-forth about 4 times before the (very angry) husband had to stop watching his favourite TV show to walk outside and stand at the end of his driveway while directing me over the phone. He did not like me after that point.

The following morning, Mum and I had gotten up around 9am, feeling nice and relaxed and excited for our day in Paris (we had planned to catch the train, no way we were driving!). The husband wasn’t happy again, he had prepared breakfast for us – which was super lovely of him but we didn’t know he was going to do that – and he had been waiting for us. Sick of waiting he knocked on our door to tell us that breakfast had been ready for a while and wanted us to go to the kitchen right away to eat. So we did. Mum and I felt pretty uncomfortable, her and I barely spoke while we ate because the husband was standing in the kitchen waiting for us to finish. He had just enough patience leftover to draw directions to the train station before we left.

Paris was amazing! When we arrived we grabbed a map and sat inside a cafe' while we decided where we needed to go. A very hansom older french man was kind enough to help us by giving a few suggestions and marked out where we should go – Mum wishes he could’ve been a souvenir. :-p
We spent the day shopping, eating and visiting the Eiffel Tower - I didn't bother trying to get Mum to eat snails and/or frogs legs, but I've tried both before and they're de-lish!

After an early dinner we headed back to the B&B, thankfully didn’t have to see the husband.

Our last morning was much more pleasant! This time it was the wife we got to meet. She had also prepared us breakfast – once we were up – and she joined us, sharing travel stories and told us the history of her family and home. We were encouraged to wonder their garden, it was so beautiful!

Mum and the wife were talking about their horse riding days when we were told about a lovely horse riding trail not far from the B&B. The wife was kind enough to call to arrange a ride for Mum and I before we left France that day. First we were being told the directions but I must have looked over whelmed with the information because the wife pointed and laughed at my face before drawing a map for us. Haha.
It was a wonderful day! The Mother and Daughter who organise the rides were very lovely, they couldn't speak much English so we didn't get to say a lot to each other but they kept their patience - even after Mum pinched a bunch of carrots and fed the horses without permission.

I was pretty bloody nervous because I hadn’t ridden a horse for about 4 or 5 years so unfortunately Mum - who was practically born riding horses - was forced to ride slow with me because my horse kept stopping to eat the grass and I was too scared to do anything about it :-D

Final destination... Amsterdam!