Wayward Whippersnapper… that’s all I get after adopting Senior on “adopt a long retired (and sometimes retarded) elderly person” day…
For your information, I stopped wearing nappies last year, and I don’t wear shorts all year round anymore! So I think we can get rid of the Whippersnapper badge eh! As for slapping my legs… Mrs. PV does that sometimes when I don’t listen to her… I think she said…
Hope you’re well David, unfortunately I’m not traveling in France a lot at the moment, certainly not in your neck of the woods. But the offer to drink a cuppa somewhere still stands!
Was able to meet with the Duke and Duchess of Brittany a couple of times though, which was quite pleasant.
Too chilly for me up there, I’ve noticed a complete change in my outlook on life that has been with me for over 60 years, I hate leaving the locality. Next panic ridden ride is to Nontron next week, 15 kms away, to collect the dog’s pills from the vet.
No I don’t know, tell me more. This is Nontron in the 24 (Dordogne) right? The only thing I know it is famous for is knives and there is an annual festival in the town. Only been to it once and never again, too stressful amongst all these young men fondling the blades.
There is an Intermarche supermarket on the road to Rochechouart, and if you go up the little road forking off from there, it leads to a factory that makes bath-bombs and similar perfumed stuff. They are suppliers for The BodyShop in the UK. Full load under 12T if I remember correctly, and a very sweet smelling trailer.
Oldish type factory, but friendly people and quick loading.
I don’t know the place but I do know where you mean because before we even lived here we found some woodworking artisans there. One specialised in decorative wooden pillars to give extra support to the upper cupboards of a peninsular unit we bought from MFI, and his mate next door specialised in decorative wooden doors for the back of the lower unit.
They were all over the Autostradi at one time, running along with who-knows-what weights on the back. All OK the so long as they had enough axles.
Fine on the flat Torino/Milano/Venizia, but crawling up and down the mountains. .
My last trip to Italy was in 2020 I think. I was scheduled to collect 2 dogs from a transporter at a rdv in Milan who had brought them all the way from Sicily.
I stopped overnight at a small cafe about an hour from destination and had a very nice meal which was made even cheaper when the proprietor treated me to a Cognac with my coffee afterwards.
Next morning I switched on my phone and there was a message to go instead to a place further south. Piacenza I think. When I got there I waited 2 hours before they arrived and at first refused to come across to park next to me as there was no space for my trailer in the car park they were in. They gave in, but the delay made the job a 3 nighter from a 2.
On the way back I stopped at another great cafe near Turin and shared dinner with 3 French drivers, regulars there. There was some concern when I walked in because there was blood pouring down my face. Because of my trailer I could only open the tailgate halfway to give the dog at the back a walk round. There was a sharp edge which made a cut in my skull. I didn’t realise how bad it looked but the wife of the patron was horrified when I walked in and insisted I sit down with a brandy while she played nurse patching me up.
We had a great night, especially because the one they called ‘the old man’ was 15 years younger than me, but much whiter. On the website there was a picture of him in the bar, as I said they were regulars there, back and forth over the border.
When I got home I realised that I had left a book there, a European Menu Reader to enable the reader to order and eat in any European language. I wrote to them enclosing a cheque to pay the postage and also buy all of my new friends a drink. The book came back but the cheque was never cashed. Nice people.
I seem to remember some similar outfits with turntable on both the truck and the trailer carrying long-ish beams of concrete or steel.
I never got that close to any to see exactly how it all worked, but would one of the turntables been on a slider too?
Ed.
I’m not sure they were actually exceptional length, but a way of taking an artic load on a wagon/drag.
Ed 2
Another neat trick the Italians were using was to take a load of steel down south, with empty liquid tanks on top of the load. Take off m/t tanks, offload steel, replace tanks on the bed and refill with wine to take to bottling plants in the north.
