L'Homme Vert in St Pierre Sur Orthe in the department of Mayenne where musicians gather to play traditional tunes and sometimes sing a song.
Yesterday I researched the cost of travelling to France by ferry or Channel Tunnel in my camper-van and was surprised to find it was, for me, surprisingly expensive, even out of high season in March 2009.
The destination that had caught my attention was a French bar called l’Homme Vert in rural France that had been taken over by an English couple and was offering traditional folk music joining in sessions on Tuesday evenings which, in my experience, is relatively unusual in France.
It seemed a relatively straight-forward matter to jump in my camper-van and head for a ferry with the knowledge that there are many aires de services in France where a camper van can legally spend the night for small amounts of money and surely it wouldn’t cost much to cross the Channel out of high season in early March.
How wrong was I!
The comfortable dream turned into an uncomfortable reality when I started totting up the costs. Despite being in the European Community, it seems that the English Channel or La Manche, as the French prefer to call it, still maintains a formidable cost barrier for those with small pockets and a rather old short wheel base Ford Transit high top diesel camper van.
The small countryside village in France I was aiming for was called St Pierre Sur Orthe in the department of Mayenne after the Mayenne River. It is situated in Pays de la Loire, France and is one of its 26 regions located in the North West.
Without doubt, there are lots of ways of travelling to France with a camper van. Innumerable ferry crossing points tempt the aspiring traveller and then, of course, there is the Channel Tunnel. It took me a full gruelling day of surfing the Web to even begin to feel I had an understanding of which among the many alternatives might be remotely feasible for an impecunious writer and camper-van owner.
In the beginning, it all looked so easy when I saw the headline grabbing day visit prices. For around £20, it was possible to travel by ferry to France on a day trip – but for this price I would have to be on foot. As soon as I added my camper van, the price shot up to £90. Taking a bicycle, motorbike or car were priced somewhere in between.
Of course, a day-trip wouldn’t give me enough time to get down to St Pierre Sur Orthe which is a minimum of 140 miles driving after leaving the ferry, especially as my camper-van’s top speed is about 60 miles per hour – with the wind behind me, clenched teeth and foot pressed right down to the metal!
The cost of travelling by ferry on a five day return ticket was priced somewhere in the region of £180, out of season, and what had begun as a happy little jaunt to play a few tunes in France over a foaming pint of French or English beer was turning into a route-march that was going to do serious damage to my pocket.
Then I discovered about all the extras that travelling in France requires from the unsuspecting motorist which include high visibility jackets and red triangles, in case of breakdown, and headlight beam adjusters to prevent oncoming vehicles from being blinded.
A quick tot up, using Brittany Ferry price lists, added more than £40 to my list of reasons for not travelling to France to play a few tunes, especially as infringement of any of these regulations can incur stringent penalties or on the spot fines from the French Police – scary!
Finally, there was the small matter of the diesel for a trip that was a minimum of 466 miles return according to the excellent AA routefinder. At 25 miles to the gallon, this added another £80, at least. Yikes!
Travelling through the Channel Tunnel looked to have some possibilities but, for me, it would mean a further 260 miles of diesel in the UK and even more on the French side of the Channel.
Of course, all these costs are specific to the travel arrangements that I identified in my researches yesterday relating to my own personal circumstances. Anybody considering travelling to France by ferry should use the many excellent ferry-finding services to calculate their own costs before making any travel decision.
However, after a day’s hard research into travelling to France in my camper van, here I am today still sitting in my office in England thinking about that little bar in the North-West of France where they will be playing some traditional English / Irish / Scottish tunes tonight.
Perhaps one day I will join them and their friendly landlady Jen to play some tunes but, unless the cost of travelling to France by ferry or other means in my camper van comes down considerably in price, it will only be after I have saved up quite a few extra centimes.
Bye for now
Rob
Rob Hopcott – online author who likes playing cheerful folk music tunes in bars in England and (potentially) in France – when he has saved some centimes.
A stiff fine is now (January 2009) threatened to be imposed on anybody, locals or visiting tourists, using Horner car park, near Porlock, in West Somerset unless they have paid for parking and displayed or have other valid authorisation from the National Trust.
It was an idyllic spot, unchanged for more years than I can remember – an English beauty spot that was just as British beauty spots used to be.
When I visited Horner on Saturday afternoon (24 January 2009), I believe as a direct consequence of these threats, numerous vehicles were avoiding the car park by parking in the passing places around Horner Green making passage along the narrow country roads difficult and potentially dangerous.
