Examine the two photos below. The first is us leaving St Pierre et Miquelon in the freezing, wet and thick fog. The second is taken some 40 hours later (after a stop over in Halifax, Nova Scotia) and shows us arriving in Martinique, also a French overseas territory (actually a Department) in the sweltering heat.

After precisely 20 minutes, the children start demanding to go straight back to freezing cold St-Pierre. When will they be satisfied? When they are served with intravenous Cokes, chewing gum on tap and x no of gifts from Hudson News, a violently expensive outlet at seemingly every airport in the Western World where a small array of toys in shrink wrapped plastic will set you back £35. It goes without saying therefore that our small entourage is facing 12 weeks of continual disappointment when it is denied the above list of exotica. Actually, only 10 weeks left. We are already onto Destination No 2. Am I counting the days? Well, sort of. I’m enjoying it but washing all our clothes every single day is trying, and attempting to LIVE without breaking the bank is also a quotidien challenge. Stealing all the food from the breakfast buffet and then slowly dividing it up during the day is our latest ruse. It’s OK but eating Danone yogurts at 9pm is somewhat grim.

Anyway, after precisely 21 minutes at Aime Cesaire Airport,  it was clear my trolley containing all my clothes was not going to materialise, even though it has a pink Baby Boden belt jauntily wrapped around it. For easy identification, naturally. Ah, well. Life with one pair of knickers is not all that bad. Especially in the Caribbean heat. Wash ‘em, hang them out on the balcony - you’re laughing. A bit better than the situation in SPM where wet clothes take about 2 weeks to dry. And there are shop windows here! And jaunty market places, and Mr Bricolage, and Credit Agricole and all the rest of the French paraphernalia we all know and love…Century 21 estate agents, Renault cars, crap music, gorgeous men. Yes, SPM was terribly French, what with its beret-toting citizens and refusal to show anything other than French cinema, but in many ways it was a foggy and expensive museum piece living off subsidies. Here in the sweltering Caribbean things are a bit more - well, real. “Why are we ALWAYS  speaking French, Mummy?” whined Lucien when it was clear to him that yes, we were in another outlying part of the French Empire. Yet when the groundstaff at Aime Cesaire bade me a friendly “Bon soir” it felt so good to be back where the Tricolour continues to fly, that I almost cried. Or was that because of the trolley, which eventually arrived on the next day’s plane?

Check out this fog!

40 hours later, it's boiling hot in Martinique and we are still officially on French soil! Zut alors!

Rosie celebrating the eventual return of her trolley 24 hours later

Shipwreck of the Transpacific

Well, they said it would come, and it has. No sooner had we checked into the wonderful Hotel Iris in tiny St Pierre (loads of room, little kitchen, tres comfy beds) than the fog rolled in off the coast and even the lighthouse at the bottom of the street was obscured. It’s no wonder they call this the graveyard of the North Atlantic - over 600 shipwrecks are dotted around the treacherous coastline of around this island. We went on a trip to the Isle aux Marins this afternoon and saw nearby St Pierre blotted out in fog the density of cotton wool. Along with a whipping wind and pelting rain, we investigated the iron hull of the Transpacific, wrecked here in 1971. The crew survived but the cargo including several jukeboxes, mysteriously made its way into various St Pierre households by the time the week was out. Weatherwise, our entire experience was severe and called for intravenous hot chocolates afterwards. “Will the airplanes be able to get out of here?” asked Mr Millard querelously, perhaps afraid that our global journey will come to a juddering halt thanks to the brouillard. Oh, no. Feisty Air St Pierre, which takes off from a glittering airport has no truck with fog. Phew. So we will make Martinique after all

Hoorah! Out of the cubby hole under the stairs in St Pierre and off on a speeding ferry to sister island Miquelon. On the way, the hardy family saw two whales and experienced one instantaneous vomiting, so I think that makes us slightly ahead. Visiting Miquelon, population 600, is like being at the end of the world. Or the beginning. Either way, its like a pioneer village with the ocean lapping at either side of the strip on which it is built, and seals popping out to say hello. Went on a nature walk with Roger Etchberry, who is so fed up of film crews crying with joy over the wild wilderness that is Miquelon that he informed me we would be the VERY last crew ever to be taken around. “He always says that”, said a local farmer. The children went off to proper French school for the day, where the entire school body numbered 32, then caught frogs, and then saw Sphinx moths, whatever they are, and a basking seal on some rocks. Who says they are missing out on British education? Not so welcome news is the fact that tomorrow we have to brave the potential of yet more vomiting and go back on the ferry to St Pierre tomorrow, which Mr Millard thinks is like the location for The Wicker Man. Still, I think we are going to witness an Edith Piaf song night at a ‘Parisian’ cabaret on Monday night. That’s clearly what French people do when they are on the other side of the world, basically. Eat imported Brie, listen to Piaf songs and cheer themselves up with a bottle or two of Apellation Controllee. 

Look at those sphinx moths behind us!!

Blimey, but it’s tres cher here in St Pierre et Miquelon. Because everything is imported, but even so. The salaries of the employees here are as inflated as the cost of living, but what do the tourists do? Only gaze in envious awe as the St Pierre townsfolk drive around their tiny city in brand new 4×4’s, doubtless planning extensions to their brightly coloured clapboarded houses or thinking of when they will next visit the brand new hospital- or maybe the vast, heated and under used swimming pool, or perhaps the sparkling Francoforum for language studies. All in all, I’m rather reminded of my visits long ago to the former Soviet Bloc when the denizens rolled around under the impression that everything was sorted, enjoying the myth of 100 per cent employment and inhabiting lovely large State buildings rather cushioned from the reality which was that it had all  come about as a result of the patronage of the State and would collapse the minute the subsidies melted away.  Us? Well, after our swim in the giant empty piscine, we are staying put in our motel room, listening to Michael Rosen’s poems on a CD player and practising days of the week in French. Our nightly menu? Foie gras and brioches? Hardly. Take a look at the photo. That’s what we have eaten now for four nights running. Mega cheap and the kids like it. Salut!

Rosie with tins of Campbell's condensed soup (Tomato)

Rosie and the kids arrive in St Pierre on the tiny mail plane

Here we are, then, visiting our first of the French overseas empire. And what do you know - it’s very French. By that I mean rude hotel staff, toilets which are broken and croissants which are utterly delicious. We are all staying, that is the children, Mr Millard, and myself, in a single room which is part of a Butlins-style motel. Well and good, except for last night. “What’s this floating in the loo, Maman?” questioned Gabriel, 9. On inspection it proved to be the contents of the entire St Pierre sewer, complete with lumps of chewing gum. Delightful. “Toilets break sometimes,” was the pragmatic response from Madame le hotel patron when a complaint was made this morning, along with a Gallic shrug of the shoulders. Bien sur, on est dans la France ici. Even the cartons of milk are festooned with Eiffel Towers. Well, its come all the way from the mother country. Probably the most moving thing I saw today, on the windswept and craggy hills of St Pierre, this tiny island in the Atlantic, were two vast satellite dishes. Pointing at Paris. So the inhabitants of this island can watch proper French television. Forget Canada, only 11 km away. It’s la belle France they care about.

Us leaving London for three months

“WHERE are you going?” asked the friendly woman on the 17 bus. “Round the world” answered Lucien, 4, excitedly. The woman collapsed with laughter. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? Particularly as we had about 15 bags with us. Hardly travelling light. We nearly didn’t make it to the end of the road. And as for “I am only using hand luggage” - well, that was a great principle. We still have a majority of hand luggage, its just we have a LOT of hand luggage. Thank God for the kid’s Trunkie roll on cases. Stops us losing them, although it was a close call at 2 am when we finally arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia. “I went out to find a cab” said the nine year old. Yeah, and gave us heart seizures at the same time. Getting a cab was easy, though. Twenty people waiting? No problem. Run ahead of them in good ol’London style, and nick the first one that turns up. Yes, I was the most hated person at Halifax International Airport that night, but needs must.