1. Driving into Normandy

After breakfast at a local cafe we packed our bags, said goodbye to Abbesses and took our suitcases on three mid-morning Metro trains to Port de Saint-Cloud where we picked up our rental car. My first experience of a left-hand drive vehicle was odd at first, but Richard is an old hand at this and got us safely out of Paris and on the road to Mantes.

Traffic on the highway seemed heavy to me, but apparently it’s always like that.

At Mantes we left the main roads behind and took to the by-ways. The side roads can be very narrow, winding through villages with houses built right on the kerb. A parked car often means the road becomes one way; and traffic volumes aren’t always light.

The narrowness of the roads only adds to the picturesque beauty of the countryside and its villages. The roads have no verges, fields have no fences: in many places the only demarcation between the two is a ditch.

Having been told all my life that New Zealand is especially unspoilt and beautiful, I feel I’ve been badly misled. The French haven’t burnt off all their forests and converted them to pasture; everywhere we’ve been farms nestle against heavily wooded hills. There’s a patchwork of colour too. with apple orchards and vineyards, crops and pasture.

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