Caravan trip - getting ready

We have spent all week getting the caravan ready for our planned 'epic' journey down to Provence - about 1200 miles round trip.   All the caravan preparation has brought back many childhood memories when our family - Mum, Dad and four kids had our annual trip to Pitlochry, sometimes to stay in a static van on site but often towing our own 6 berth caravan.   The rituals, the laughs, the travel sickness, the crys of 'are we there yet?' having just left home.    I noticed the caravan today has that certain odour that caravans always have - sort of faint furniture polish?    We bought this little two berth last year - it is English but French registered (a huge plus, saving a mountain of bureaucracy and pulling out of hair).     It is in very good condition for its age and is now gleaming and packed to the gunnels.

We have always wanted to see Provence (who hasn't?) since reading Peter Mayle's hilarious novels (A Year in Provence) about his adventures settling there and having watched the DVD starring John Thaw made in the early 1990s.    Then more recently I read the Olive Farm trilogy by Carol Drinkwater and felt compelled to go and see it all, as she so beautifully describes the area.   We will arrive just at the tail end of the Cannes Film Festival and hope to find some pavement space (being unable to afford even a coffee I am sure) to gape at all the lovies in action.    We have booked five nights at Carol's gite just outside her estate where the old Algerian gardener Quashia used to live.    I am so looking forward to meeting her and maybe getting a wee peak at the fabled Olive Farm.... but first we have to set off and I am getting giddy.    I remember the agony of waiting and waiting forever on the first Saturday of July every year for Mum to finally be ready and Dad getting anxious... ("in the name o' goad Violet, are ye no dun yit?").   .   I now appreciate all the work that went into just getting us ready to go.   Phew.