Robbed in France

“I was robbed, in France. In the trees the birds were singing … ”
We leapt out of bed on that fine, fresh Sunday morning to find our belongings strewn across the tarmac. Handbag, maps, clothes, documents, wallet … even Jenna’s toys and books. These were the thieves’ discards. They had blitzed the van in seconds – from the cab to the foot of my bed. My first panicking thought was of the kids, but they were asleep, unhurt. No matter what the Marseilles bandits had taken, it didn’t matter. No-one was hurt. Really, possessions are just stuff. Having three kids left unharmed was worth far more and yes, I thanked the burglars for it.

Then began the practicalities … what was missing? Amazingly, passports and credit cards were left behind. Cameras, coins, cigarettes and mobile phones were gone. We couldn’t believe that we had slept through it. OK, so we’d had a hell of a day and were cream crackered but it was weird that not one of the five of us had woken up. On reflection, this was the best scenario possible. If anyone had woken up, if we or the robbers had panicked, someone would have been hurt. You also have to feel pity for people who are in such a bad place in their lives that they have to do this; that they would countenance breaking in while a family slept. By the looks of what they had taken, these guys needed ready cash and small, easily and quickly fenced items. Perhaps they had a drug habit to fuel. Whatever, I am thankful that I am the robbed not the robber. I made a shaky phone call to my mum, the French police, our insurance and our phone company. Joe and the kids went to grab some coffee and to find out the exact address of where we were. The gendarmes advised me to report to any police station. I was glad to be able to get by, at least, in French.

The locks on the driver’s door was busted and Jenna spotted that someone had also tried to drill through the main living area door locks. Luckily, they’d failed and the deadlock held. But not so Ford lock in the cab.

None of the lorry drivers who surrounded us had heard a thing. In a multitude of languages, they were sympathetic but unsurprised. It’s Marseilles, it’s not uncommon, was the consensus. So, there was not a lot more we could do. Now you can be defeated and get paranoid when something like this happens or you can trust to kismet and the belief that what goes around, comes around. We therefore picked up two hitchhikers and set out on the road again. The hitchers were great – a young couple from New Zealand and the Czech Republic – typically idealistic, sporting guitars and grubby backpacks. They were vague hippies, utterly positive about what we were doing and cheered us up no end. Of course, we ended up doing a major detour to drop them off where they needed to be, but it didn’t matter. You can’t let the tiny percentage of vile people in the world lead you to believe that everywhere and everyone is dangerous. Two gentle travellers helped restore our belief in the niceness of most folk.

We stopped at a couple of roadside gendarmeries, but this was Sunday and nothing was open. So, we headed on down to the sunny south coast – determined this time to find a secure campsite where we could base ourselves and sort out all the problems and admin that arise from any robbery. After many trials and tribulations, driving through Med seaside towns of varying quality but invariable traffic and tight turns, I finally found an almost inaccessible campsite midway between Cannes and Nice. I didn’t care how hard it was to get into – I was getting into it. And we were stopping for a few days.