letter of the month
In May we were returning from a holiday in Switzerland in our two-year-old ’van. Friends had recommended the aire at Urvillers on the A26 autoroute in France, where they’d stayed overnight. It has a fuel station, restaurant and well-lit parking, so we decided to stay there.
In the early hours, we woke up and found that a camera, our TV and my handbag were missing. My handbag contained our passports, cash, cards and spare keys. I phoned the bank to report the stolen cards.
Apparently there is a big problem in France with lorries and ‘camping cars’ being broken into by thieves using some sort of device that allows them to open doors without keys – they even remove complete rear doors from lorries.
After going to the gendarmerie to make statements, we phoned the UK embassy to report the stolen passports and get emergency ones. En route to Calais, I called the embassy again but was told I needed to go online and fill out a form, which would take two days to approve, after which we had to go to Paris to pick up our passports and pay £100 each.
As we were by then so close to Calais, we went there to see if anyone could help. On arrival at Calais, everyone was so helpful – P&O check-in looked at the police report, entered our passport details into their computer and let us through; French Customs checked the police report and looked at the photos of our passports on my phone and let us through; UK Border Force took all our details and said they would advise the Passport Office our passports had been stolen. When we told them that the UK Embassy had said we might be sent back to France from Dover, they said they were not allowed to prevent any British citizen repatriating to Britain, even without a passport.
We thought we had taken all of the necessary security precautions, but we have since added a further deterrent.
The photo above shows a ratchet strap that we now use to add further security to our ’van. It is in a figure-of-eight, so if anyone were to try to gain entry by opening either of the front doors, they would be unable to do so because the doors are strapped together.