Van Life Diaries: Europe 1985 – Hong Kong, England and France – Episode 348 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

This is the first of a monthly, six-episode series celebrating the fact that exactly 40 years ago this year, my family and I spent six months in a striped motorhome travelling around Europe. I was nine years old and yes, this trip had an enormous impact on my life – I’m sure you wouldn’t be listening to this podcast today if Van Life 1985 hadn’t taken place! Throughout the series, I’ll include chats recorded with my Dad this year, extracts from my late Mum’s travel diary from 1985, and of course my own memories and thoughts. Some of these were prompted by our old family photos, too, and you can find some of those below.

In this episode, our journey starts in Hong Kong, where you might be surprised at what my Dad remembers most; we then fly into London, where it’s all systems go to equip us for the months of travelling ahead, including the important purchase of a motorhome (or a campervan as we called it). We take a hovercraft across the Channel to France, see Paris, and have a very special experience in coastal Biarritz. 

A big thanks to Context Travel for sponsoring this series, and an even bigger thanks to my Dad for agreeing to be part of it.

Links:

• Context Travel – use the code THOUGHTFULTRAVEL to get 15% off any online booking. Context Travel operate walking tours in cities around the world, and have interesting and qualified subject-matter experts leading your walk
• Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers
• Join our LinkedIn group for Thoughtful Travellers
• Sign up for the Thoughtful Travellers newsletter at Substack.com 

My Dad was the official photographer of our trip, and of course this was back in the days where a film camera was the only option – there are so few photos compared to a modern-day trip, but that makes them more special. My Mum put together the album which I still have and frequently look through.

Hong Kong, March 1985

I had never left Australia before. (What a contrast to my son, who in the next century would have the good fortune to have taken at least a dozen trips abroad by the same age.) My Dad had six months of paid long service leave from the bank he worked at, my sister and I were stocked up with distance education lesson plans to enable us to be out of school for six months, and we were ready to go!

A couple of days into our stay, it was my ninth birthday. We celebrated with a trip to Ocean Park, and a special dinner. (You’ll have to listen to the podcast episode to find out what curious product we found at that restaurant dinner!)

England, March/April 1985

After those few days to get our travelling feet, it was on to England. I still remember arriving at Gatwick Airport. (To be honest, I “remembered” arriving at Heathrow Airport, until I checked my Mum’s diary.) But the memorable part was feeling so unwell. I think it might have been a combination of all those hours in the air with cigarette smoke swirling around us (I’m so glad flights became non-smoking!), jet lag, tiredness, perhaps a little unwell, but my memory is of sitting down on a bag in the immigration queue being sure I was about to faint, I felt so dizzy and awful. And then a stranger gave me a candy! Honestly, true story – I can still taste its strawberry flavour today and it perked me up a little.

Our initial time in England (spoiler: we will return later in the trip) involved a little London and Brighton sightseeing, and purchasing our campervan/motorhome for the rest of our trip.

Curiously (in hindsight), we then took a hovercraft from England to France – the Dover to Calais route. This Hoverspeed journey closed down a coupe of decades ago but was a quick way to cross the channel, before the tunnel was built.

France, April 1985

After overcoming some driving challenges (you need to listen to the episode for both my Dad’s take and my Mum’s version of this), we found our way to a Parisian caravan park.

We discovered that even back then there were a LOT of tourists in Paris (listen to the episode to know more!), and we didn’t ascend the Eiffel Tower, but we did have the obligatory photo!

The final story we cover in this episode of Van Life Diaries: Europe 1985 is of a very memorable morning in the small town of Biarritz, coastal France. I’m not going to tell you about it – you’ll have to listen to the podcast for that! – but here’s a photo of one of the precise moments I describe.

Episode Transcript

Amanda Kendle 0:00
Hello and welcome to episode 348 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast. It’s the beginning of a super special series. So welcome, welcome to Episode One of the Van Life Diaries Europe, 1985. Let me first pay my respects to the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation, where I’m recording this podcast today. So this is a super special monthly series: Over the next six months, we are traveling not just around the world, but also back in time. I’m revisiting the most important trip of my life, the one that set me up to always be curious about the world, because it happened 40 years ago this year. So, yep, way back in the 80s!

During the van life diaries Europe, 1985 series, I’m going to be reliving a six month budget motor home or camper van trip my family took around Western Europe when I was just nine years old. I’ve interviewed my dad to help me with this, and I’m lucky to also have access to my my late mum’s travel diaries from the time, along with our family photo albums and my own childhood memories, along with reliving these memories of a life changing trip, I want to talk about how travel memories impact us, what’s changed and what hasn’t changed in the world of travel over these four decades, and also why taking your kids traveling is always a good idea.

Before we hit the road, I want to say huge thanks to the sponsor of this series, Context Travel. They’ve been operating walking tours in cities around the world since 2003, have been a certified B Corp since 2011 and they find incredibly interesting and qualified subject matter experts to take you on a very special tour. More from Context Travel during the episode.

Part one of Van life Diaries Europe, 1985 actually starts in Hong Kong en route from Australia to Europe. It sees us by a motor home in London, and ends with our first experiences driving on the opposite side of the road in France. Our flight from Perth to Hong Kong was the very first time I had been on a plane in my life. I was eight years old, and just a couple of days short of nine years old. I would turn nine during our time in Hong Kong. My mum’s diary reports a little bit on this flight. Prior to departure, we ran into Phyllis and Tony Moore from Esperance. Hadn’t seen them for some 16 or 17 years, flight off, on time, and girls excited. Tony Moore gave us a note, which was meant for him to see the flight deck. Girls thought that was super I don’t really remember getting into the cockpit, but there’s a photo of it, and I know it happened, and it’s certainly something that doesn’t happen very often these days, so it was definitely fun. And how Perth that on a flight from Perth to Hong Kong, we bump into people that my parents knew, that they knew long before I was born. I asked my dad about what he remembered from our time in Hong Kong. Would you remember anything about Hong Kong from that time? Yes,

Barry Kendle 3:35
we had rock melon from Australia. Yeah, served at a restaurant we ate at. That was a thing I remember. No, it doesn’t make any sense, but that’s so funny. Well, to see an Australian product overseas, I thought was great. That is crazy. How did you find out it was Australian? It just still had the little sticker on the bottom.

Amanda Kendle 3:54
The photos show that we went on the Peak Tram in Hong Kong and visited Ocean Park, amusement park for my ninth birthday. My mum’s diary reports a little bit on what we could see about us Hong Kong looks interesting flats where people live with their washing all out the window. We are lucky in Perth staying at Holiday Inn adequate. I do remember that seeing lots of apartments was so different to my life in completely suburban Perth, and in fact, my diary from the time even has a drawing of the washing hanging outside the apartment windows we could see from our hotel. It definitely made an impression on me, and it was beginning of realizing that travel makes us see how lots of people live in lots of different ways. After a few days in Hong Kong, we flew on to England. We did a little sightseeing in London while we were staying in a hotel that became infamous in our family law, but it was mostly preparation work for the many months ahead. We were shopping for winter clothes and most importantly, shopping for a motor home or camper van, which would be our home for the. Next few months. But back to that hotel, I asked my dad what he remembered about our short stay in the Alpha hotel in our first days in London.

Barry Kendle 5:09
My most vivid memory is that the little place we were staying at for breakfast, it was baked beans, and I hadn’t realized that the British were so keen on baked beans, we had it every day for breakfast.

Amanda Kendle 5:28
Was it? Did you get sick of it?

Barry Kendle 5:29
Oh, in the morning, I didn’t like it at all.

Amanda Kendle 5:33
There you go. It’s not what we would eat here. Actually, it’s funny, because in mum’s diary, she mentions, on our final morning at that hotel, before we moved into the camper van, that you were the only one who ate breakfast, so I guess the rest of us had got thoroughly sick,

Unknown Speaker 5:49
so that it was pretty ordinary.

Amanda Kendle 5:52
Yeah, I remember that hotel. I remember we weren’t allowed to walk on the

Barry Kendle 5:56
floor, no, because the carpet might have been a bit dirty. Yeah, yeah.

Amanda Kendle 5:59
My mom’s report on that hotel goes like this, alpha Hotel, Victoria, owner claim very close to everything. PS, all wear our Cathay socks when we were out of bed. So grotty. I do remember that, and we kept those socks for many years. I remember we had flown Cathay Pacific, and they had given us these fairly grotty looking green socks. I have to say already, they didn’t look great, and we wore those socks in that hotel. And I think out of nostalgic value, we all kept those socks for as long as we could, until they fell apart. Now our next job, of course, was to get our home and wheels for the next six months. And I asked my dad about what he remembered from the process of buying our motorhome, which is not easy, especially back in 1985 where you couldn’t look up a website or get any useful information like that easily. I’m curious what you recall about buying the camper van from Turner’s not a lot. I looked him up. It still exists tournament. It’s called something. It’s still Turners, something to do with vehicles like forgotten. But I looked him up on Google Maps for

Barry Kendle 7:11
motor deer. I thought he was pretty, pretty good, pretty fair. Yeah. And of course, when we came back from Europe, we rented that flat from him that he offered. I remember that, yeah, yes, he was a good bloke. Yeah, I think so.

Amanda Kendle 7:23
It’s funny what you remember? Because I really distinctly remember waiting around in these Turner’s offices. They must have needed to finish something. I know they needed to do a couple of fixing up things on the van before we could drive away the next day. I think it was but I really distinctly remember waiting and waiting in a pretty boring office. I remember kind of dancing up and down with my sister and just hoping for that waiting time to be over. But isn’t that weird that 40 years on, that’s the bit. That’s the bit I recall. I do remember the guys who worked there as well. Obviously, we spent a long time there, and they were probably not used to having two young girls from Australia standing around waiting as well, but we had our motor home camper van, and we loved it. It was our home, and we were ready to get going. We did spend a little bit of time in London before we hit the road. I remember we got to see the changing of the guards, and I know this mostly from photos and my mum’s diary, and she said that we also visited Westminster Abbey, which I had forgotten until, until I checked her diary, I revisited as an adult, and felt like it was new to me. But you just never know, do you? And then lastly, from my mum’s diary of our London adventures. She writes, walked miles. PM, hoping to see madam to swords. But so many people queue very long, people from bus tours, from Germany, etc. We will see it later, back to the tube, then home. So it seems that over tourism and long queues in tourism hoping to see famous sites was rife already back in 1985 sometimes I feel like over tourism is kind of a new invention, but apparently, no. Thanks again to Context Travel for sponsoring this episode, and I thought I’d pick out some highlights of their walking tours that match the places we’re talking about today. For one, of course, the iconic city of London, where one of the tours Context Travel offers is a hidden history tour led by historians or archeologists, which includes hidden remains I have definitely never seen, or moving on to France, which we’ll reach in the second half of this episode. I love the sound of the Baguette to Bistro signature Paris food tour. I remember buying baguettes in numerous French bakeries to eat inside our motor home with dinner. But now that I’m older, I would like to learn a whole lot more about Parisian food these tours are guided by chefs, sommeliers and food writers, so they know. Their way around Paris for the taste buds.

And so it was time to head off to France. We actually took a hovercraft from Dover to Calais, which, at the time, I thought was, well, I thought it was normal, because that was the only way I’d ever traveled with a vehicle across any body of water. But in hindsight, it was fairly unusual to take a hovercraft, and it was a service that I did check finished in the early 2000s you can’t take a hovercraft anymore, but so it’s kind of a different way to travel. But I’m glad I got to do it. I might not have the chance again. My mom’s diary reported that it was a 32 minute trip, always so precise and not rough. But what was rough, apparently, was driving off the hovercraft and onto French roads, onto the other side, which she reported as traumatic. On road about 9am to Paris. Could not find way in, and ended up about in the center. BK threw a few red lights and wrong side a few times, but we made it traumatic. Finally found Ring Road and fell over, signed to caravan park. Very pleased to see it. My dad, who is the BK referred to in my mum’s diary, didn’t remember it as being quite so bad.

Barry Kendle 11:18
The weather was lousy. I remember that. But apart from that, we probably had some difficulty finding the caravan park. Yes,

Amanda Kendle 11:29
I think we did. Well, first of all, it was the first time to drive on the

Barry Kendle 11:32
wrong side of the road, of the road, yeah, which is, no, I don’t remember anything specific about it. Nothing. Nothing terrible happened. It was

Amanda Kendle 11:42
just bad weather, very good now, tricky driving wrong side of the road, difficult, roundabouts, etc aside. I mean, to be fair, of course, there were no Google Maps in these days, and my mom was navigating from a physical Atlas, which we still have in our family to this day. So, you know, it was tricky for everybody concerned. We eventually got there and spent some time in Paris. We didn’t go up the Eiffel Tower. We have pictures of being nearby, but apparently nobody felt the need to go up there. But curiously, what my dad remembers is something that was another early sign of over tourism. I

Barry Kendle 12:22
do recall we went to the louver and the queue there had signs like, two hours, and further back, three hours to indicate how long you would have to wait before you get get in. Wow, that was, you know, we just couldn’t afford that sort of time. No, ah, that’s crazy. There may have been a skip the Q tour or something. We didn’t

Amanda Kendle 12:51
take it. That’s interesting. Though, they had signs up like that, kind of like, at waiting

Barry Kendle 12:54
time, yeah, I haven’t been to Disneyland. Yeah. They

Amanda Kendle 12:58
have, like, yeah, kind of that, how long it will take from certain points? Wow, that’s crazy to think that Paris was so full. And that’s 40 years ago,

Barry Kendle 13:07
tourists. Yeah, cold place is full of tourists. Yeah, well, now it’s massively

Amanda Kendle 13:10
over touristed. But obviously it was then too. After Paris, we headed out into non Parisian areas of France and down the coast. In fact, what I really loved about many aspects of this trip was that somehow my parents knew it wasn’t just the touristy, famous sites that were going to be important, and they did all kinds of, well, I think, at the time, slightly crazy and different things, and this is one of them.

Barry Kendle 13:41
Now I’m asking you a question. Yes, do you remember? Bear it, I do,

Amanda Kendle 13:45
because I remember going to the school there. Yes, that’s right. Can you tell me what you remember about that? And then I’ll tell you what I remember. Well,

Barry Kendle 13:52
it was a thought to do that given to me by one of the people that we associated with touring to London, uh huh, and we gave it a try. And I’m not sure that it had any long term effect. Tell me about it.

Amanda Kendle 14:12
Well, I remember it to this day, so I guess it did have a long term effect. Didn’t teach me any French, but I remember. I don’t remember. I kind of remember standing around like waiting, but then I remember being in the class, and I remember that a kid gave me an eraser as a gift that was memorable. And like, I would be interested to know, you know, it’s a little, you know, it was a little French school. Maybe some of those kids even remember, you never know what you know, what impact things like that can have.

Barry Kendle 14:40
That’s true world. Yeah. So that was very cool. It was interesting that there was that dining room. Did you have lunch there?

Amanda Kendle 14:48
I don’t remember, yeah. So they must have had, like, proper meals in school, the way we don’t. 40 years ago, my mom’s diary has also come through with some more of the fact. About my sister and I visiting this school in Biarritz. Visited school to see if girls could have half a day Primary School in Biarritz. Children do not learn English. Staff most helpful, though not much good on the English neither us at French. At one time we had five staff all talking together. Riot. Very helpful. And finally, we were taken to the college 12 years and up, and girls had an hour English lesson with the class. Teacher, lovely, and talked and asked questions, mostly surprised that girls could have six months of school. Certainly France would not allow more than one month. Girls enjoyed. Yes, the girls did enjoy that visit to the school. I honestly remember receiving that eraser gift, and always will. What I’ve noticed most so far from going through my mum’s diary, looking at our photos and chatting with my dad, was that there was a lot that was new to all of us in these first weeks of this big trip, my dad had spent time working for the bank in Papua, New Guinea. But other than that, none of us had experience of other countries. But while we were kind of learning about all the differences in these places, new languages, new foods, lots of new things, we were also already starting to see that there were a lot of similarities too, and I think especially when you’re staying in a caravan park, you get to kind of experience a lot of those similarities as you meet and greet other people. I think above all, as young children, I was nine and my sister was seven, didn’t matter too much where we were. I think as long as we had our parents around, wherever we were, felt like home, and that motorhome certainly became a cozy home during those six months. Next month, in the second episode of the van life diaries Europe, 1985 series, we will be traveling to Spain, Italy and Greece, and I can’t wait to share it all with you. Big thanks to Context Travel, the series sponsor for their support in creating these special podcast episodes. You can find out more about their tours at Context travel.com or find them under Context Travel on your social media platform of choice. If you want to try a context tour yourself, you can get a 15% discount by using the code thoughtful travel when you book online. Thank you so much for listening to episode 348 of the thoughtful travel podcast. A massive thanks to my dad for agreeing to sit down with me to chat about our long ago trip. I will share some of the photos, which are all taken by him from our trip in the show notes.