Dogs, cats, horses and husband are back at home but frequently update me as to their activities via email and Skype
One of the few good results of a long haul flight is that I can wake up early. Mind you 3:45am may be a trifle earlier than required but it’s such a novelty for me to wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed that it is almost acceptable.
Tempted as I am to get up and start tapping away at my laptop to get this blog done (I can just imagine Alison saying “Blimey what hope have we got if even Deb can’t get her blog in on time”), I decide that this may not be the best thing for my dear friend Melissa who I am staying with. So I lie in bed and think about my flight from Melbourne to London via Dubai. Not much to contemplate really – it’s pretty dull travelling alone as my husband Paul is back at home tending to the dog, cats, home, business and horses (of course one went lame with a fat leg the day before I left).
The flight was pretty uneventful (maybe a new name for the website – An Uneventful Life?) but, joy of joys, the plane was empty from Melbourne to Dubai which meant 13 hours of stretching out across four seats – heaven! Even my luggage turned up quickly – I find it nerve wracking waiting for luggage due to the fact that a few years ago when heading to the WEG in Aachen, my baggage disappeared into the bowels of Heathrow. This is enough of a drama but, as it was during the time when people were trying to blow planes up with a bottle of water and you were not allowed to travel with any hand luggage, I had put all of my WEG tickets in my check in luggage. Luckily the bag (or more importantly the almost thousand dollars’ worth of tickets) turned up a few hours before I got on another flight from Manchester to Germany
The swans on the canal check out the houseboats (no I'm not staying on one of those)
It’s now a more reasonable hour of the day and I’m overlooking the Regent’s Canal in Islington as I write. It’s amazing how travelling a few thousand miles can transport you back in time and I can almost imagine I’m back living in the centre of London rather than on a 20 acre property outside of Melbourne. However, the fact is, I’ll only be here for a day before heading over (or under) the Channel to France. I did live in France for a year many moons ago but I’m pretty sure that my comfort zone in France, even though I was back there last year, won’t be quite as strong as here in London
I’m heading to Le Pin au Haras in Normandy for the 2014 WEG test event and the CIC 3* the following week so will be spending a couple of weeks around Le Pin and Caen. Obviously the main reason is to try and give our 4* members (love you lots, you dear people) some unique coverage of the events but I’ll also be trying to give you a feel of the area and what Normandy is like, here in my blog.
So let’s start with how I’m getting there. Tomorrow I’m heading from the gloriously architectural St Pancras station (worth a visit even if you aren’t travelling anywhere) by train to Caen (pronounced ‘Con’ by the way). This involves taking the Eurostar to Paris, Gare du Nord then swopping stations to go from Paris St Lazare to Caen – about 6 hours travelling in all. Last year Paul (my husband) and I took the Eurostar to Paris then picked up a car and drove to Le Pin which was great but my nerve has let me down and I decided that, as I’m travelling alone, I would take the train to Caen and pick up my rental car there which, handily (I hope), is right next to the train station.
Meanwhile, our intrepid photographer, Libby Law will be tootling along in the aptly named Turtle – a sort of camera on four wheels with a bed – getting to Le Pin via the ferry from Dover to Calais. It was very tempting to do a ‘Thelma and Louise’ (wonder who Brad Pitt would be – no doubt Andrew Nicholson if Libby had her way) but a 7:30am crossing and potential sea sickness made me re-consider. So we’ll report back on both of our journeys in my next blog which actually makes it sound more like an episode of Top Gear than Thelma and Louise.
That is if I can get internet connection, which I think may turn into an adventure all of its own as I try to organise my French internet dongle (FYI, known as ‘un clé internet). If I don’t manage to get my head around ‘les clés internet’ and the various ‘forfaits avec ou sans engagements’ this may turn into a very Uneventful Blog
I bet you thought that writing was the tricky thing about being an equestrian journalist – welcome to my world
