Fontainebleau, Again

Sunday, April 19, 2009

When we got up in the morning at the new campground in Fontainebleau, it had stopped raining (although things were still rather damp).  We managed to find a bakery that was still open to pick up breakfast at, and then Nick wandered around our campground and eventually found some of the OUMC people we had intended to meet up with – although not all of them.  Apparently some of the group were stuck in England (including one girl who was actually French) because French workers were striking and blockading the ports so ferries from England couldn’t get in.

So we hung out with them for a little while, but not very long – they actually had to leave that morning and were packing up their (quite buggy) campsite before Nick went over and distracted them.  We ate breakfast there, and Nick also cooked a giant pot of hot chocolate.  We had a surplus of yucky UHT milk and the only thing to do with it was to make hot chocolate out of it.  The milk had come from a party we had camped next to in Siurana that had a surplus of a bunch of supplies that they didn’t want anymore and gave to us (we also had a giant bag of potatoes, a lot of dishwashing soap, and 3-4 more rolls of toilet paper we picked up from them).

Eventually, Nick couldn’t distract the rest of them with hot chocolate any more, and they took off.  Things still weren’t very dry, so Nick went on a sudden let’s-clean-the-car rampage – the back was getting very messy.  So I mostly observed while he rounded up the escaped potatoes and got them all back into their bag.  He also took inventory of our toilet paper – that had sort of gotten out of control, too.  See, back when we were in Fontainebleau the first time around, the campground we were at didn’t provide you with toilet paper in the bathrooms, and we assumed this would be the case for the rest of the trip.  So, on the Saturday, knowing that Easter Sunday and Monday were coming up, we wanted to pick up a 6-pack of toilet paper.  But the store didn’t have 6-packs.  So we ended up with a 12-pack of toilet paper.  But then we stayed in a hotel Sunday night – and when we got to the Siurana campsite on the Monday night it turned out that one did have toilet paper.  Then we got another 4 rolls of toilet paper from the group camping next to us.  Our next stop was the hotel on the next Friday night, and then the Fontainebleau campsite we were at now – which also had toilet paper.  So now we had a collection of about 16 rolls of toilet paper rolling around in the back of the car, which Nick was sorting out.  He also dedicated a “bags’ bag” for the empty bags floating around.  I mostly observed this and ate more of the gummy worms I had got in Andorra.

Finally, we decided that things had dried up enough to make an attempt to go climbing, and headed over to Apremont, where Nick wanted to try his project.  Some of the holds turned out to be wet, but we still had fun on some of the problems around it, and took some photos.

 

 

After that, it was our lunch time.  Meanwhile, we had made plans to meet up with Neal-from-HMC sometime in the afternoon, which was complicated since none of us had cellphones that were particularly reliable in France.  We were using his sister, based in England, as a liason.  However, we somehow did manage to meet up with him at the Melun train station after lunch.  Neal was a little stressed out, because one of his bags was lost on his flight from New York to London, and was now tent-less, but he was still up for heading to the boulders.

Meanwhile, things had started to dry, and by the time we had Neal, the sun had come way out.  The three of us then headed over to Cul de Chien for some late afternoon bouldering.  I did a couple 5Cs, but nothing harder than that; Nick and Neal both did similarly.

Eventually, we tired Nick out, and Neal was trying to save his fingers for future projects, so we headed into town, intending to pick up a pizza to take back to the campsite for dinner.

Well, that turned into an epic – the pizza shop, which Nick had ordered from in the past, was very slow.  After interpreting the menu (kind of), we picked a pizza with potatoes for a topping – I love those!  But one of the other toppings on the pizza we didn’t want, so we ordered it without those.  Then we waited … for a long time.  Eventually, after checking in several times, it turned out that the pizza lady had accidentally made a pizza with the topping we didn’t want.  We’d already been waiting like 45 minutes by this point, and would have happily taken it anyway – but she said she’d already thrown it out and was making a new one.  Ugh.  I think she was sensing a mutiny and gave us a free bottle of Coke – but I don’t even like Coke.  It pleased Nick and Neal, though.

Eventually we got back to the campground and ate our pizza – finally.  After that, we headed to bed, which was a bit tricky.  Nick’s tent only fits two people (barely), so Neal was stuck sleeping in the back of Nick’s car, which is a station wagon (or, in British, an “estate”).  Luckily, after Nick’s cleaning rampage, the back was a little cleaner, so we were able to arrange stuff so that Neal had a flat area to sleep.  It was probably still rather chilly for him though.

So, those were our adventures on our next-to-last full day of our spring break road trip.