430. Tate

MARCILLY-SUR-EURE - NEAR TATE'S SCHOOL

Forty minutes to Tate's School (usually)

Another deserted camp

Arriving at Tate's school
Yellow vest on the dashboard as
a sign of solidarity

The camp is nice and close to Audrey's friend Tate's School, Ecole Des Roches. Tate is the daughter of Jago and Lucy and elected to go to school, on her own in France which at eleven is a very brave move indeed. I know, having boarded for secondary school. Jago and Lucy had arranged for us to collect Tate at nine in the morning. It hadn't occurred to us that the protests would continue during the week. We managed to blag our way through the first roadblock besoin d'avoir une fille à l'école and then took a very circuitous route to avoid the roadblocks which we could see on Gmaps.

Took us almost two hours, arriving at ten which was a poor show as I remember what it was like waiting for people to arrive to take me out for the day.

Audrey and Tate were delighted to see each other

That's some airstrip!

Tate showed us around the school, it is sixty hectares so, obviously, we didn't see the whole place. It is a long walk from Tate's boarding house to the café but she wasn't concerned as she always runs. I was keen and delighted to see that they had a very good airstrip, as advertised.

We returned to the Giantavan, via a circuitous route, for lunch, the girls electing to stay for the afternoon and play which was very nice as Tate is such a delightful child.

Audrey and Tate - BFF

Tate had to be back at seven so Audrey and I left with an hour to spare as it was a cold, dark, evening and with protests finishing at seven I thought we would be fine. We were also short of fuel and I stopped at an automatic station but all the pumps were draped with yellow vests and turned off. I was appalled to see the protests in full swing and did a dodgy u-turn to get out of a huge queue ahead. With the fuel light glaring we made it at seven on the dot. I was quite concerned as we now only had eleven kilometres range, with forty five kilometres back to camp.

Visited three stations without success and at the fourth a man arrived at quarter past seven and turned the pumps on, couldn't believe my luck as we were parked beside the pumps and I was looking up accommodation for the night. Range anxiety is not just the domain of EV drivers. On filling the Disco I discovered that I had less than a litre of fuel left prior to refilling.

Now it was after seven the protests would be over so though GMaps warned of a four minute delay I decided to take the main road to see them packing up. What a duffer, we hit a massive queue and a central median strip barrier so no chance of escape. Took us two hours to get back to camp. Five hours driving for the day to collect and drop Tate, so much for camping close! Had we camped in Paris and tried to go out for the day we wouldn't have seen her at all so, all worth it for the lovely day.

Reading the dash, 849km range - phew
2ºC for the protesters
5:54pm, another hour in this queue (not that we knew it)