Herbie Pitt has his first proper adventure

With Tilly having travelled to Peru, Argentina and Brazil in her first year, we always felt a tad guilty that Herbie's adventures had been limited to Rugby, Daventry and Leicester (although the John Lewis is very nice).
It is therefore with great excitement that we started out travels at 3.00 in the morning (certain people still wandering the streets drunk after leavers ball), all packed, Tilly and Herbie wrapped in their blankets, an we headed to Folkestone - this wasn't the extent of Herbie's adventure, it was just where we caught the Eurostar.

So I sit writing this blog from a slightly dodgy hotel in Poitiers, on the 4th day of our travels. We are sat on the floor outside a hotel room waiting for Tilly and Herbie to fall asleep. This has been our plan every day and it has somehow worked a treat. Herbie goes down in the travel cot, Tilly has to ignore him till he falls asleep and then she has to then get her head down. 4 nights in and 4 full nights of sleep (sort of, see the later adventures at the Lemon Hotel).

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We arrived in Folkestone not really knowing what to expect; how do you get a car on train? where is customs? do all our fluids have to go in little bags? what happens if it breaks down? (a fact that the passengers the next day actually found out - crikey I got stuck on the ghost train at Drayton Manor when I was 10 and that was bad enough). Anyway, it turns out you get your passport briefly glanced at, there is no giant car x-ray machine, and all of your toiletries are fine your bags, like normal. Clearly they don't believe in terrorists under the sea? Or maybe its because they don't have a Boots store at the Eurotunnel who are interested in you only being able to buy big toiletries from them - or maybe I am just being cynical. Sorry I am going off track.

We manage to get an early train (a very rare concept in England), there is a giant arrivals board in the waiting car park that beckons you through and then you wait to go onto the train. They call you in and then you drive to the end of the train. It is the weirdest experience (well the second weirdest after falling asleep on your hand and then waking up with wobbly stranger hand - wooo wobbly hand, aaargh pins and needles). It was like driving into the future, with shoddy 90s surroundings and display panels. But before you know it, they have started the train - no driving senselessly around a runway, no boring safety talk, no overpriced cuppa soups and pringle deals.

Within an hour (well within 6 programmes from CBEEBIES on the ipad), we have arrived in France. You drive off the train, where they carefully guide you on the right of the road, another person glances nonchalantly at your passport cover, and you are then shepherded onto the motorway that is conveniently titled, the Inglish road.

And the best part is that it is still only 8.30  in the morning. We are in France and still have a full day ahead of us. Herbie has just woken up and he has a proper adventure ahead of him that is going to be more exciting than navigating the Leicester one way system.

We continue on the Inglish Road; all the French have diverted off, strange you think until you then realise that this is a toll road. Those crafty French!

15 Euros later, we arrive at The Somme Museum of the Great War. With it being the 100th anniversary of the start of WW1, it would only be polite to visit. As you drive in, you expect rows of poppy filled fields, acres of cemeteries like at the start of Saving Private Ryan (I know that is a different War but my mind only really works in film references). Instead you get a normal road, normal houses and a market that looks like a Saturday morning in Rugby (this is not a compliment). We go around the market looking for beautiful food, French baguettes, fresh vegetables; instead there are tens of stalls selling plastic bands for children and clothes that would best be worn at a gypsy wedding or alternative chavvy engagement - the ones where the children look like they have never dressed out of tracksuits in their lives and have been forced to wear a shirt with a garish pattern on, never tucked in, with some kind of 1990s gel on their hair and trainers that could only have been found in a hidden away corner of sports direct.
Then you turn the corner and there it is - FRANCE! Not the outskirts of Paris France (although we accidentally went there as we tried to navigate around the traffic jam that is Northern Paris) but real, dreamlike, French France. The market stalls stopped selling fake Barbie Dolls and toy guns made illegal in England years ago and actually started selling real French things. Local food, local vegetables, live chickens (although we did not say what they were for), French baguettes, cooked chickens, garlic, strange stuff that we did not know what it was but it was most definitely FRENCH!  and there at the end of the street was a giant fortress that had been turned into the Museum of The Great War.

Tilly instantly thought we had found a castle and posed for multiple photos, Herbie just loved the water that surrounded it and Clare and I wandered in to see the museum. Tucked away it may be, but this is certainly worth a visit. The controversy of the war itself is left well behind and instead it just deals with adverts, maps, posters, uniforms, kits, cannons, tanks and an overall sense of the pointlessness of the war. Wilfred Owen would be proud. It is also, most importantly, a museum in honour of the war without making you feel overly depressed. Instead you are depressed for those that are dying today, that the War to End All Wars did nothing but cause many many more.

The Somme was left behind by driving through fields and field of more Frenchness. The scenery of Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan is laid out in front of you and it can only be described as beautiful.

Our end destination of Day 1 as Reims. Although I am now Head of Geography at Rugby School, my Geography was shown up by Clare who knew this was the centre of the Champagne region - I however just kept getting Rouen and Reims confused.

We arrived at the first of our budget hotels (the whole hotel spend over our 8 days cost less than one night at Disneyland Paris Hotel (and we were staying in the cheapest ones)), on the outskirts of Reims. And it actually wasn't too bad. It had a weird double bed with a bunk bed above it and just enough room for the travel cot before the strange wipe down bathroom (this was to be a feature of the budget hotels (why clean when you can jet wash it)).

We dragged out bags in (no lift, its budget!) and left to visit Reims. We stopped at the first Cathedral we saw and got out to find the shops. One huge great cathedral stood in front of us, but no shops. We walked the streets and saw nothing but dodgy looking immigrants (not that immigrants are dodgy, just that these ones were), huge piles of dog muck and still no shops or places to eat.
We returned to the car only to see a real life mafia wedding starting in the church (we had now found out that t was not the real Cathedral of Reims and just a huge impressive, massive church). The church was packed with people actually wearing those black and white spats, with hats on. I almost expected Tom Soprano to waltzdown the street and Pauly to be the best man.

We stared open mouthed at the wedding for a few minutes and found the real Reims. This one really was impressive. The Cathedral was really really huge this time and there were hundreds of impressive shops and, most importantly, food restaurants. We had been travelling since 3am and had only eaten a few scraps in the car. We sat down at a hugely overpriced burger restaurant opposite the cathedral (tourist error number 607) and ordered. This is when France comes into its own. In London you would end up at an Angus Steak House where they serve 10 day old horse meat. In France, they label their horse meat and serve it to your taste with exquisite garnish. Needless to say the food was amazing and Herbie nearly made it through without screaming (nearly).