"I'm amazed by the food supplies some people take when they go caravanning or camping. Its as though Devon & Cornwall are devoid of food shops or restaurants."
Well, we heard that the locals call tourists "grockles" and its given an image of gum smacking locals waiting for a run of salmon to arrive. Hence everyone in the north brings their own food and just uses the toilets..
;-)
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Well we heard that the locals call tourists "grockles" and its given an image of gum smacking locals waiting for a run of salmon to arrive. Hence everyone in the north brings their own food and just uses the toilets..
Devon folk call you grockels, cornish folk call you "emmetts"
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AE, my Devonian bil calls them 'emroids' .....
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Londoners used to call everyone who wasn't a Taff or a Jock carrot eaters or swede bashers. Alas, though, London has turned into a virtual-reality estuary and there aren't many Londoners left.
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As a born n bred cockney Lud, you forgot Mick.
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Jays I didn't at all. That's another counthry altogether.... would you want me to be listing all the Ahmeds and Bhupinders and Antonios and N'Graftas and so on till kingdom come?
Life would be too short so it would*.
*a touch of Ulster there too
Edited by Lud on 17/08/2009 at 16:21
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I saw an English couple sitting outside a caravan in France in armchairs with a standard lamp between them.
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Were they in white plastic chairs, in a layby?
If yes, probably the madam and minder looking after their girls!
Edited by pmh3 on 17/08/2009 at 17:07
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I saw an English couple sitting outside a caravan in France in armchairs with a standard lamp between them.
We were once on a Dutch campsite with a very serious young German man pitched beside us, always dressed rather formally. Every evening he set up a little table, complete with tablecloth and bottle of wine and cooked himself a gourmet meal.
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Nothing at all wrong with that - it what separates individuals form the crowd.
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Yup, no sutch thing as "normal" just you and everyone else.
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Nothing at all wrong with that - it what separates individuals form the crowd.
Standards have to be maintained. Style and class will always shine through even on a camp site
Edited by Altea Ego on 17/08/2009 at 17:34
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I only do camping when I have to.
The best place for it is the Sahara (no mud unless you are exceptionally unlucky). As the guest of a guerilla movement once, at a big junket they were holding, I shared a tent with two friends, both black Africans resident in London. While we were there there was a quite serious sandstorm and several tents got blown away, but ours was all right. As the wind howled, three tentless refugees were brought to share our capacious tent. They were all German photographers, moaning miserably as they tried the zoom and focus on their hugely expensive cameras and listened to the sand grinding audibly inside them, even though they had been kept in sealed plastic bags.
When the younger of the two Africans started his evening Yoga routine, which involved various bizarre body postures and much extremely heavy breathing, the Germans went a bit quiet though. The other African, a South African actor and film maker now dead, cheered them up by dispensing parsimonious shots of Jameson from his bottle. He was being really stingy though. He didn't want his bottle to go the same way as mine which I had allowed to fall into the hands of the Nigerian press.
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I'm afraid my life hasn't been as colourful as Lud's. But when staying in a tented camp in the Masai Mara I was rather amused that all the canvas ridge tents had brick built en-suite bathrooms.
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Take a look in a Touratech catalogue - even motorcyclists can maintain home comforts away from home. In fact given free reign in there I'd never need a hotel room again.
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I am afraid that when my parents toured Europe in the Citroen DS (staying at hotels)
the small folding table was packed in the boot, along with two folding chairs, a primus stove, kettle, cups, and of course loose tea and tea pot.
Knowing them as i do, I have little doubt that when tea time came and all that was availble was a lay by, then that is where the brewing up took place.
When it came to food, My father could say "steak and chips" in 300 languages, and 4000 dialects.
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My first foreign trip was in 1957 to Antheor in the south of France in a Standard Vanguard. (Terrible car!)
My dad took a primus stove to cook with and bacon, eggs, butter, bread and tins of treacle pudding.
The butter became liquid, the bacon soon went off and the primus was a nightmare.
He later travelled the world, so he got much more cosmopolitan. Although he took sandwiches to eat at the airport. Now I realise he was smarter than I thought.
When my family and I first went abroad, in a Ford Cortina MK4 (which broke down), to La Napoule in the south of France, I took a crate of Davenports beer! So I was a bit like him.
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I took a crate of Davenportsbeer! So I was a bit like him.
Davenport's beer !.......Is it still available ?
I well remember the lorry coming down our road in the 50s and later. The beer came in glass bottles ( returnable ) in wooden crates of 6 bottles ( I think )
Their slogan was ' Beer at home means Davenport's '
Home delivery and the pub's 'jug and bottle ' was about the only place you could buy a pint to drink at home.
Happy days...........no cans !
Ted
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Seriously cool parents, IMHO, AE. I wish mine had been like that!
The kind of folks that made Britain great - before our generation spent the family silver.
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The kind of folks that made Britain great
What, buying Froggy cars LDO? Hardly patriotic even if it does show good taste...
(Only teasing AE. They sound very nice actually).
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quite right, in one pannier on the bike i have:
petrol coleman stove and lighter
stainless tea pot, doesn't burn on the heat.
tea bags, coffee sachets, hot choc and sugar 'borrowed' from hotels i have visited
a litre bottle of water and a pint of milk, don't like dried milk
metal mugs that don't break if you drop them
and most importantly A SPOON.
within 2 minutes of stopping i can have a cup of tea and a biscuit.
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On a trip to Normandy a couple of years ago I took...
Tent, Blow up bed and pump.
Clothes, wash kit and medicines.
Chair and table.
Single duvet, pillow and bedding.
Umbrella and spare coat.
Stove, pan and kettle.
Shoes, camera and personal items.
All on my BMW R45 bike.
Got the P. taken..... but slept well !
Ted
Edited by 1400ted on 17/08/2009 at 23:32
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On my last 5 trips to visit friends in sunny CA I have always taken a whole Ribblesdale Blue Goats cheese and Orkney Oatcakes (thick).
Surprisingly, the colonials have yet to confiscate either.
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i know an old boy who takes stella to belgium because he says "you can't get good beer abroad", silly or what.
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"includes a selection of her favourite kitchen knives"
...
I rather hope that's in jest.
Not at all. I wouldn't fly with mine, of course, but when we ferry-drive and self-cater in France I take two knives (one long, one short) and a steel, as well as my most versatile high-sided frying pan, a pepper grinder and a pair of Bialetti stove-top coffee pots. A big part of our reason for holidaying in France is the food, and it's harder to enjoy it if all you have are blunt knives and thin-based pans. The kit doesn't take up much room - and rather than trying to take home away with us, I'd argue that it helps us to appreciate our new surroundings.
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I am afraid that when my parents toured Europe >> the small folding table was packed in the boot along with two folding chairs a primus stove kettle cups and of course loose tea and tea pot.
And so they should, quite right too. Having toured France on a motorbike last year and found to my intense annoyance that the concept of English tea does not even exist in McDonalds, we should take every opportunity to remind them of what they're missing.
Somehow though I doubt if it will bother them. :(
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Hotel Roosavelt in Givet (France) served a decent pot of tea once we'd trained the owner up.
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I once tought a hotel chef in a very remote part of south eastern Brazil how to make fish, chips and mushy peas, complete with salt and vinegar and washed down with a mug of strong tea. Evidently in due course it became a popular, (albeit locally seen as rather exotic), choice on the menu.
Did I ever mention we used to have a Westfield? Sorry if I haven't. We used to go away for up to three weeks with that with just a small holdall strapped on the back. I expect we smelled a bit sometimes though.
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Hotel Roosavelt in Givet (France) served a decent pot of tea once we'd trained the owner up. Got some freinds in Givet who own a hotel, can't just think of it's name but it's facing the river next to the Restaurant de la Tour...which was owned by them.
Secure parking for the bikes at the back. Funny to see Martine dodging across the main road to the tables with our trays of beers !
Great value 'chip van ' by the tower in summer.......sells all sorts of good food.
Ted
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The lady in charge was blonde and middle aged. Nice place - very nice.
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I think this year our car contained/carried for a 2 week trip to the Ardeche in France:
2 White Water Kayaks and kit
2 Mountain Bikes and kit
60m Climbing Rope and kit for 2 people
Tent
Cooker
Table
Chairs
a random bag of bits for a friend working out there
Some spare fluids for the car
Cool box
Gas
Clothes, shoes and walking boots
A Wok
Cooking tools
Over 1000 miles we averaged about 32mpg with the kayaks on the roof and everything else inside. The car didn't bat an eyelid at doing it, even with the air con all the time.
Pretty impressed when I got back as the car is running even better than before having done 2500 miles in 2 weeks, including the 1000 mile journeys basically none-stop (probably stopped a total of 4 hours each way!)
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OK
hows this for the minimum then
To a town south west of Paris.
Three white shirts on hanger, three pairs of pants in door pocket, three pairs of socks (black) in other door pocket, toothbrush in ashtray, laptop in boot.
All in a very empty touran.
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