La Chapelle d'Armentieres 2

There we go, abandoned again. This time it's both Mum and Dad off for a return visit to nrthern French town La Chapelle d'Armentieres. twinned with Birchington in N. Kent, and the original source of the old 2CV restored by 4 blokes from Dad's 2CV Club and widely now known as Mademoiselle from Armentieres after the WW1 song (It's the only thing UK school boys know about Armentieres!).

The old girl, built originally in November 1961, is in her 50th year now so they decided to do a revisit to the town's Carnival weekend, retracing the steps from their triumphant visit in 2009, the 20th Anniversary of the original twinning.

I am being told by Dad to describe this adventure in real time plus 3 days, so I have to take the three days to tell it, so here's day 1. The guys decide to take 3 cars over - the old Mmle car, Dad's 1986 2CV and Mum's modern car as support in case anything untoward happened. The were booked on the 11:30 Sea France, so it was a fairly leisurely get up and breakfast. We were left in the capable hands of the Angel B, so we were OK, though A-B did grass me up for being off my food and missing my Dad.

They met up at the dry storage where Mmle spends her days, and convoyed down to the docks, the only hiccup being Mmle having a stall while not really warmed up. At the docks, in the marshalling lanes, Mmle attracts many admirers and much comment. On the ferry the gang buy maps and plot a good route down - Ardres, St Omer, Hazebrouke, La C.d'A. Again an incident free run to arrive at the house of thier friends, an English lady married to a French guy. It's all fairly gentle as the old car, with its 435cc engine can manage only 48 mph (75 kph) on the flat, so they all toddle along.

The main entertainment that night is being welcomed by the town and the Mayor, invited to see the local schools' "Spectacle en Anglais" - a series of sketches in English by the local children of 6-7 years old, with the 7 local schools taking a sketch each following the story of Jules Verne's "Around the World in 80 Days". From there to a free rock concert by a French band. Difficult to hear most of the words in the rubbish accoustics, but good renditions of, for example Cocaine Blues.

And so to Bed, but because this is semi-real time Dad says I can't yet tell you about his howling faux-pas which left Mum swearing about having to drive like Virgin Mary and now has him buying apologetic fizz. You'll have to wait for that.

Sworn to Secrecy

Deefs