WORLD OF WILL

Auxonne is a fortified town with a military college which, for just two years back in the late 1700s, was attended by none other than Napolean Bonaparte. And, boy, don’t they make a meal of that fact. If they can’t name a street, square or shop after the diminutive despot, then they simply whack up a bloody great statue of him instead.  We’d been met in Auxonne by our friend Matt who would join us for the rest of our trip. Once we’d ensconced ourselves in the town’s campsite, the three of us set off on a bike ride along the river to the village of Flamarans, seeking out vineyards that might let us taste their produce. However, despite Auxonne being situated in Burgundy, we found not a single grape. Even more annoyingly, Flamaran’s one and only bar was shut. In fact, the only shop in the village was a taxidermist’s and, given that none of us were in particular need of a stuffed boar, we cycled all the way back to Auxonne, hot, disgruntled and empty-handed.  ...

Due to our mechanical issues, we’d not been able to reach our intended target of Vitry Le Francois on that first day. Instead we made an impromptu stop at a campsite next to a small, walled town called Le Quesnoy. We’d never heard of the town before but can confirm it is a lovely little cobbled enclave and comes complete with its own moat, boating lake and historic town centre. Our stay at the campsite itself was slightly less rewarding, in that there was some sort of children’s karaoke competition taking place until late into the night which meant we had to endure a noise worse than when foxes mate. Imagine a recording of Joe Pasquale being tortured, played backwards, at the wrong speed… Talking of horrific noises, in the weeks before we set off on this trip, we’d had new brakes fitted to the van. The van is celebrating the fact it has new brakes by emitting a glass-shattering scream every time we come to a stop. You can see people physically cringe a...

So, we are off again in our little yellow bread bin. This trip will be just a fortnight this time and, subsequently, I wasn’t planning on documenting it – but then we started getting into a couple of scrapes on Day One so, hey, why not eh? The plan is to head across France to the Alps via a couple of wine regions (Champagne on the way, Burgundy on the way back). Simple, right? We were about half an hour outside Dover, on our way to catch the ferry, when the accelerator pedal went slack and we lost all power. On a dual carriageway. After a panicked phone call to someone who knows more about engines than we do, I was directed to look in the engine bay to see if the throttle cable might have become detached. We quickly unpacked the back of the van and gained access to the engine (for the uninitiated, the engine lives in the boot). Sure enough, the throttle cable was detached and lying slack on the hot engine block. Luckily, and somewhat precariously, resting ...