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Roland Routier

September 2017 - April 2024
An open-ended adventure by Roland Routier Read more
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  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Dieppe Beachhead

    September 9, 2017 in France ⋅ 🌧 13 °C

    The Camino is over, but the journey continues. This time I am travelling in an old Frankia camper van between various 'jobs' that I find. I signed up to https://www.workaway.info/ on which different hosts worldwide offer free lodging and feeding in return for about 5 hours work per day. The type of work is varied, though mainly involving agriculture and property maintenance of the handyman type.

    First I must retrieve my few belongings from Roanne. Tonight is my first night in the van, and I have parked right opposite the ferry which brought me over from Newhaven. I am practicing my stealth camping skills but nobody has taken any notice of me anyway.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Sarcelle revisited

    September 15, 2017 in France ⋅ ☁️ 10 °C

    Taking my time on non-toll roads I have arrived back in Roanne where nothing seems to have changed since I left last year. Very few people about and so I cannot renew old aquaintances. Recovered my stuff from Boatshed including my portable gas cooker so I can now have hot tea and food. The camper has German gas appliances and it seems I cannot get a French adapter to connect French gas cylinders to them. It turns out that European countries each have different and incompatible gas fittings so I am not sure what it is worth doing. Sarcelle, my old boat, is still moored int the port and is full of junk so I don't think the new owner has any immediate plans to go sailing.Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Corniche Nice Dream

    September 22, 2017 in France ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

    Followed the dream through Nice along the Corniche and spending the night at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. I think it is Thursday and so am taking it easy on the slow road past Monaco.

    I found a flat parking spot for the night on the hill overlooking the harbour. In the morning there was a bloke fixing his carburettor a few metres away from me and I asked him for directions to a supermarket. Turns out he was a Pom renting the house whilst his wife worked in town, so we spent an hour talking bikes and politics - things aren't what they used to be - before I set off. By the time I got to Italy it took all day on the winding coastal road and I realised it would be cheaper to pay the autoroute toll than to keep filling the tank with diesel.

    Oops: it's Friday so I can't meet Vanessa at the beach house as planned. Will go directly to Bonsi for her birthday lunch organised by Claire.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Bonza birthday bash at Bonsi

    September 24, 2017 in Italy ⋅ 🌙 12 °C

    Taking the motorways all the way from Menton cost me 30 Euros but meant I probably saved 70 in diesel and I arrived in Bonsi, (about an hour's drive South of Firenze,) yesterday afternoon at about 4 o'clock. Beautiful calm evening in the sunset. I had the place to myself until an old peasant decides to hoe his vegetable patch 3 metres from my spot.

    The families arrive late morning and we enjoy a nice birthday lunch for my little sister.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    First Workaway

    September 25, 2017 in Italy ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    This will be my first job, at CentroAnidra (http://centroanidra.it/index.php/it/). What they didn't tell me is that the roads are narrow, the valley sides near vertical and there are very few places to turn a car, let alone a van, around. This I discovered getting here late last night, when HereWeGo, my iPad GPS, directed me down a narrow lane that eventually petered out into a forest track. I had to reverse back to a farmhouse in order to execute an 8 point turn, hoping the fragile valley side wouldn't give way.

    To add interest to what would otherwise have been a banal experience at midnight, the van manufactures have put forward facing side lights near the roof at the rear. My rear view mirrors therefore serve only to destroy my night vision. I scout the way 3 metres at a time with my torch and then back up blindly.

    Miraculously I only destroy a pile of plastic crates left out for garbage collection. (Yes, it appears that there really are small garbage trucks here that collect from the side of forest tracks.)

    The twin electric fans in the engine bay kicked in with all this revving and sounded like an aircraft taking off. By this time the dogs were barking and lights were appearing in the old stone cottages. Being in hunting territiory made me a bit nervous, but I managed to skidaddle without a shot being fired.

    Luckily I only had to do this one more time before finding my destination, although this time I had to reverse up a 1 in 4 drive with a curve at the top, and the van does not have the power for a hill start so I needed about Half a dozen tries before gaining enough momentum to get up onto the level and bending the bumper on the earth bank.

    When I got to the CentroAnidra turnoff I decided not to venture down the track in the darkness, and found sufficient space to park by the road for the night. Checked in after brekky and working by 10:30 on cleaning up after a wedding.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Marquees de Borzonesca

    September 29, 2017 in Italy ⋅ 🌙 17 °C

    One activity here is the hosting of weddings in a grand marquee. My first job is to pack up after last weekends event and store the furniture away. We also dismantle a smaller marquee and put the material into a storage container. The wooden floor remains for me to sand and varnish before constructing an A-frame about 3 ft high to support tarpaulins which will protect it from the weather.Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Indian camp

    October 1, 2017 in Italy ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    The Argentinian shaman has arrived with his assistant to conduct a North American plains Indian sweatlodge ceremony for a personal development group that has coughed up some hard cash for the event.
    First we must build the ceremonial lodge. We chop down a dozen willowy saplings and plant them regularly around the circumference of a circle, with offerings of tobacco in each hole. Then we bend opposing poles to the centre and whip them together with twine, (for everything must be organic,) until they have formed a star enclosing a square in the centre. The whole is covered in a dozen, brown, woolen blankets reminiscent of army ones.
    A hole is dug about 15 inches into the floor ready to receive stones heated on a large open fire 3 metres distant. In line with the door and the fire a small rock pile forms an altar, where the ceremonial tobacco pipe should be but isnt as this would be politically incorrect in the atmosphere of CentroAnidra.
    The shaman invites us to attend but it does not seem appropriate to crash someone elses party when they have paid for it. Instead, I catch glimpses of half naked (for this is Roman Catholic Italy, and traditioinal nudity would be unseemly,) figures chanting in circles before entering the lodge circulating a number of times and slipping out covered in sweat.
    Afterwards all the participants seemed happy.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Conventional rework

    October 3, 2017 in Italy ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C

    The next major job is to take all the event stuff out of the container again and set the big marquee up for another event. We also dismantle the neat pile of tarpaulin wrapped straw bales that we had spent a day building in order to use some for tables and room dividers.Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Coconspirators

    October 6, 2017 in Italy ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

    This week I have worked with Luigi, the communist employee from southern Italy, with whom I have established a good rapport. I tell him I have to supervise his work as one cannot leave Africans without direction: that is the white man's burden. He tells me I am a useless imperialist and he has to redo my work. We have made a stack of firewood with blunt saws and ancient axes as well as carrying loads around the property at the behest of the ladies of the staff.Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Animal attractions

    October 13, 2017 in Italy ⋅ 🌙 13 °C

    Another activity of the Centro is personal development and the running of university courses. The guru, Paolo, a florid middle aged man, has arrived from Milan and is surrounded at dinner by six women acolytes who literally dote on his words which pour from him without interruption. The volunteers leave dinner early somewhat embarrassed by the scene.

    Animals are kept but not integrated into the farm. There are 14 chickens kept permanently in one location. They produce about 5 eggs a day. There were six fat pigs, again in an enclosure, but one died of a suspected heart attack being morbidly obese: they were all around the 200 kg mark I'd say. There is no swineherd and a different person refills the feed container whenever required. Consequently the pigs are frightened of people and difficult to manage as I discovered when sent to read the 5 eartags. Getting close was next to impossible but I managed to get a shot of each, which as you can see was entirely useless. This operation was necessary because the person responsible for this side of the business had buried the dead pig with its identity tag, they had no record of the numbers, and the vet wouldnt issue a disease clearance certificate for the Dept of Agriculture without it.

    Later we started training the pigs to enter the wagon which would take them to slaughter by laying feed in the entrance laneway.

    Also in the menagerie is a donkey, two geese and two peacocks.    Read more

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