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British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
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Driving
Daisy... We collected Daisy from the Happy Waggers Dog Rescue Kennels when she was 18 months old. By the time she was five, we had learned to deal with her terror of the dark, fear of torches and incontinence and had come to accept that she would never be a gun dog as she preferred to eat the pheasants rather than retrieve them. She also hated going to kennels because of the bars on the cages, so last year we decided to take her on holiday with us. Many of our friends had taken their pets abroad and had trouble-free holidays. So how difficult could it be, we thought? Did I mention that Daisy is a Springer Spaniel? Planning was the first requirement because you can’t just leap onto a ferry with a dog. Daisy had already been micro-chipped but this has to be done before ‘The Vaccination’. The pet must be vaccinated against rabies (not before it is three months old so we were OK there). Then a blood sample must be taken to ensure that the vaccination has been successful. These measures are not for taking the dog out of the country, but for bringing it home again. Without them poor Daisy would have been stuck in Calais. Not such a bad idea, thought my husband, when she pulled him into a ditch full of muddy, icy water last weekend - but that’s another story. The pet cannot be brought back into the UK until six months after the successful blood sample has been taken. I think you can see where this is going. At least six months before going on holiday, before going to Boots for the sun tan lotion, buying the clothes and digging out the suitcases, the rigorous rules of rabies prevention have to be applied. Don’t even think about booking the journey until after the blood test has been OK’d by the vet. When this happens the pet is issued with a pet’s passport to which you may attach a photograph. So far so good; Daisy got her passport. We decided to book our crossing on the Eurotunnel as it is a much shorter crossing of about half and hour. Travelling with a dog is exactly the same as travelling with a baby. The car soon filled up with Daisy’s bed plus a mountain of towels for drying and cleaning. Add two weeks’ supply of dog food plus biscuits, food bowl, Bonios for lunch time snack, Markies for bed time, medication and poo bags, lead and whistle (mostly a waste of time with Daisy), toys: especially lamb and badger, duck and old sock; water. We managed to squeeze our two small suitcases onto the back seat. It was our first experience of the Eurotunnel but the process was very straightforward. There were no queues and we were able to drive straight on to the train. Although the compartments are closed you can get out of the car, so that it is not too claustrophobic. The journey time allowed us to check our maps. Having said that, the whole journey from Herefordshire to the French Alps had to be measured in driving hours, allowing comfort stops for Daisy and an opportunity for a morning and afternoon walk. Spaniels are very energetic. The first thing to be done on arrival in France was to find a vet because any animal has to be checked and treated for ticks and fleas before coming back into Britain. This has to be done 24-48 hours before the crossing therefore the vet has to be within that time away from the port. We researched vets on the internet and chose one in St Quentin. The surgery was empty. Both the receptionist and vet spoke perfect English, understood the requirements and booked us an appointment two weeks later. We did not need the list of useful phrases, found on the internet, such as ‘our dog needs to have anti-tick treatment’. The next factor to be considered was hotels en route which would take dogs. We knew that hotels in the Ibis chain were sympathetic and aimed for them, but subsequently discovered that the French love dogs, and every hotel welcomed Daisy. A nightly charge of €5 was made. Bars welcomed dogs too. Then we had to find places to walk both during the day and on arrival at a town for the night. Reading the map as we drove along, we looked for points of interest just off the main route; a church, viewpoint, ruin, or riverside that we could walk to. Parking the car, we would set off on foot into the French countryside, following farm tracks or minor roads until Daisy had had enough exercise to tire her out. We never met a single soul on our walks, but enjoyed the most spectacular scenery. Aires, the equivalent of lay-bys, provided additional stopping opportunities. These were usually equipped with picnic places, WCs and rubbish bins. At night, after walking the streets it occurred to us that most towns have a parc de ville, a suitable green space for Daisy to run about in but until then we had a completely different perspective on town canine life while we wandered round last thing at night looking for a patch of grass. St Omer, our first overnight stop had a delightful parc de ville, which we discovered on our return journey, but the only hotel in Troyes, our next stop, was on an industrial estate with not a blade of grass in sight. The food was freshly cooked with salade de gésiers for the first course (gizzard) which Daisy would have loved. Our route took us through Tournes, a medieval town, with good walks around the hotel and lots of grass. We passed through Grenoble and stopped at Gap, staying in an ancient, decrepit hotel with no-where to walk Daisy except to the nearest bar. Our destination, an apartment in Jausiers, on the river Ubaye, was close to the Italian border and a ski resort during the winter. In summer it was heaven for Daisy, with long walks into the mountains every day and riverside walks before breakfast and bed. As the weather had become very warm, it was necessary to find paths and tracks with shade and to carry water for Daisy as well as ourselves. She was endlessly fascinated by the goats in the field next to our building but they were behind a fence, thankfully, and so out of reach. Not so the lizard which she chased through a bar, then into the kitchen, with the chef in hot pursuit. Other things to worry about with Daisy, apart from rabies, were snakes, cats and other people’s picnics. A woodsman also warned us about marmots, which have claws that can seriously injure if not kill a dog, just as Daisy disappeared over the horizon into dense woods in hot pursuit of aforementioned marmot. Distance in the mountains is not measured in kilometres but in hours. Walking to the deserted mountain village of Fouillouse, the uphill climb took us so long that Daisy eventually flung herself down under a tree and went to sleep. The only person left in the village, an elderly man who remembered the fighting in the mountains during the last war, was quite frosty until we told him we were British at which he produced beers and ice creams from his café. Daisy had to be tied to the table to prevent her chasing the numerous village cats. One day we decided on an outing to the Parc National Du Mercantour with the aim of walking around the Lac d’Alios. After a terrifying, hours-long drive over a narrow snowy mountain pass, running the gauntlet of cyclists, mobile homes and motor bikes with a precipice on one side and a sheer rock wall on the other, we arrived at the National Parc - only to discover that dogs were forbidden in order to protect the wildlife. We learned to check in advance. Before coming back to England on the Eurotunnel we returned to the vet in St Quentin. He administered the treatment which was the same (Frontline) that we get from our vet at home and a worming pill. He suggested that if we had brought the medication with us from England it would have been half the price that he charged us. At the tunnel terminal a dedicated area is set up for the reception of pets, complete with an exercise area. At the office all the pet’s documentation of passport, vet’s certificate, vaccination and blood test record has to be inspected before boarding the train. It was all very simple, well organised and straightforward. If anyone had asked me beforehand what my nightmare holiday would be, I would have said ‘an Alpine walking holiday with a dog’. In the event it was a delightful holiday in a spectacularly beautiful area at a time of year, June, when the meadows were full of wild flowers, the weather was hot and sunny and there were few tourists. Tracks were very well marked and graded for difficulty. It was a completely dog oriented holiday and, apart from a few small antisocial moments, Daisy was quite well behaved and travelled well in the back of the car. She was, however, really pleased to get home. Are we taking
her away with us this year? No. DEFRA: www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/quarantine/index.htm Email: pets.helpline@defra.gsi.gov.uk Passport for pets website for vets in Europe: http://homepage.virgin.net/passports.forpets PETS Helpline 0870 241 1710 (8.30-5 weekdays) Insurance whilst travelling under the PET Travel Scheme: 0845 055 1020 First published in VISA 89 (Dec 2010)
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