Living the life of Smiley

Firstly, our deepest and most sincere apologies to you all for such a brief entry yesterday.

I gather from our Tone, and from comments and other texts that we now have quite the following. At this stage in our journey, our readers are now in the rhythm of a little dose of bloggage whilst swigging a morning cuppa. If blog entries were coffees, yesterday’s was more of an espresso shot, rather than the gallon of coffee with whipped cream, frothed milk, chocolate sprinkles and cinnamon dust that you may have grown used to. So here, I shall serve you a frosty Frappuccino with all the trimmings (caramel sauce, vanilla syrup, ginger essence) and all with oaty, coconutty, soya, non-fatty almondy milk.

 

We’ve settled into Smiley very well and have established some really rather civilised and domesticated ways of living.

We have a fridge (the small step down from the passenger footwell). I am the proud custodian of this space and it is where we store water, milk and other squirrelly bits from breakfast, like yoghurt and juice. (We actually have two fridges; a front one and a back one - in the step down from the side slidey door. #allthemodcons)

We also have a fruit bowl (the slot above the glove compartment that stops things rolling about). This is where we store our, similarly squirrelled, fruit from hotel breakfasts.

There is a medicine cupboard (a small plastic cup in the slot on top of the glove compartment) where tablets can be found.

We have a bedside cabinet that comes out at night (during the day it goes under the double bed – possibly where light goes when it’s dark?). The bedside cabinet is actually Tony’s suitcase, and it’s the perfect height for glasses, phones, and other bits and bobs that might be required during the time of sleep.

Yesterday’s delight of washing our clothes meant that we saw the innovative, resourceful creation of the Smiley washing line (trademark pending). Knickers and socks were draped over the steering wheel, tops were hung on the gearstick and handbrake, and long-sleeved shirts were tucked into the sun visors. It’s amazing what can be done in a van (and apologies to Treez in advance if you find a sock or pair of briefs in years to come somewhere in the van!!).

#vanlife #batmanbelongsonthecupholder #ihavenoshamepostingpicturesofmypantsontheinternet

This morning we decided to turn the tumble-dryer on (the night heater) to thoroughly dry out our wet clothes. (I say our… Tony has thrown most of his clothes away en route so my garments made up the majority of the load.) Our tumble-dryer has a timer that tells you how long is left. We really are living the life of Smiley.

 

Perhaps this might be a good time to remind you how we set out on a trip across Russia. We anticipated minus temperatures and cheap (30p/L) fuel. We’re now in southern France and it’s becoming a little on the warm side (c. 18*C). The price of fuel is ever-increasing. There’s little we can do about the diesel prices but we’re going to need to get ourselves some summery clothes!

 

We’ve also got to know Smiley a lot in other ways over this trip (and Tony has had about 108,000 miles to also get to know her). We know what makes her light up (or rather, what dims her lights) – a reconnection of the battery! We know that she likes to tell a porky or two – she says 45mph, we know it’s 50mph, the modest gal. But we don’t know what that bloody scrapey srapey noise is when we steer left. She seems to behave OK but we’d love to know what it is! We’ve almost got a game on our hands between Tone and I of who’s going to be the first to shout ”Scrapey Scrapey!”.

 

After fooling around on the outskirts of Grenoble for most of the morning (it turns out that when Stacey says “straight on”, Tony hears “turn right”! 😉 😜), we started heading south, towards Gap/Sisteron. A side note at this point, if I may (mwaha - as if you have any choice!), Tony has the most uncanny, remarkable talent of making romantic towns of France sound like the gertest lushest Bristolian towns. I’d never heard the beautiful town of Briançon < Bree-on-son > pronounced < Bryan Con > before, péage < pay-aahje > pronounced < pay-aRrrRj >, and "Montpellier" < mon-pell-ee-ay > pronounced < mont-pull-eeh-errr >!)

We climbed and climbed in the van, ears popping aplenty and we snuck out of tunnels onto viaducts high above the little villages below. We took a main road that wasn’t the motorway, which took us right through the heart of lots of pretty Provencal villages. #windowshuttermeupbaby #cantgetenoughofthosesweetsweetwindowshutters

We stopped at a service station around lunchtime to enjoy the sunshine and our sandwiches that we’d squirrelled the day before from breakfast and continued on down to Marseille, arriving around 2pm.

Marseille is a town I’ve always wanted to visit (not least because I watch the cheesy French soap that’s supposedly based there: Plus Belle la Vie!). Marseille absolutely lived up to my expectations and more. We headed into the “vieux port” (old port) and stumbled upon a city sightseeing bus. Hoppy-onny-hoppy-offies have redeemed themselves because Marseille rocked my world and Tony seemed to enjoy it too.

A few photos…

 

After fooling around on the outskirts of Marseille for most of the early evening (it turns out that when Stacey says “straight on”, Tony listens to “straight on”, even when she's directing him back into town! 😂😁😏), we managed to make progress towards Montpellier.

We've stopped in some services for tonight (I bloody love sleeping in the cosymobile!) and will perhaps try and get all the way down to Barcelona tomorrow.

Vamos, chicos!!