Two Jills and a Tots: Tottie's Travels, #2

By Tottie Limejuice

Tottie's on the road again. With her usual quirky humour, she describes her latest adventures on a road trip to Italy. Taking one good friend to meet another for a few days' stay in a Hobbit House.

Nothing ever goes according to plan where Tottie is concerned. Ordering a brand new car for the trip was always going to be a gamble. But did it pay off?

And what about the planned night of wild camping on top of a big rock? Would that pass off without incident. After all, it never rains in that part of Italy in June. Does it?

Why not put the kettle on, put your feet up and join Tottie on her latest adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Livres LEMAS
• Release date: Aug 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9782901773245

Tottie Limejuice

Tottie Limejuice is the pen name of former journalist and freelance copywriter, Lesley Tither. Writing as Tottie Limejuice, she has authored the Sell the Pig Series of personal travel memoirs, as well as Tottie's Travels, a series of humorous mini travelogues. Lesley also writes crime fiction, the Ted Darling Crime Series,  as L M Krier and children’s fiction as L M Kay.

Book preview

Tottie’s Travels

Two Jills and a Tots

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Tottie Limejuice

with

Jill Pennington

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from Tottie Limejuice, the author of the Sell the Pig travel memoir series,

the Ted Darling Crime fiction series (writing as L M Krier)

and children's fiction books (writing as L M Kay)

Written in collaboration with Jill Pennington, author of ‘Diary of a single parent abroad’,

and co-author of Take Three Birds (under the pen-name Jilli Lime-Holt)

Copyright © L M Krier Tither 2018

Published by LIVRES LEMAS

ISBN: 978-2-901773-24-5

The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

To the Two Jills

without whom the holiday would not have been

one long series of laughter and mad capers

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Note from Jill:

Thanks to Tottie, Jilli and Millie for another grand adventure.

Table of Contents

Chapter One    Sounds like a plan

Chapter Two    Donde está mi coche?

Chapter Three    The best laid plans ...  

Chapter Four    Have tent, will travel  

Chapter Five    A nightingale sang 

Chapter Six    Not for la signora

Chapter Seven    Because it’s there  

Chapter Eight    No exit  

Chapter One

Sounds like a plan

I love planning! Whether it’s for entertaining, for a night’s camping or a holiday away from home. You’ll find me, weeks in advance, pen in hand, making endless lists. I find it as much fun as the event itself.

Another thing I love doing is introducing my various friends to one another, hoping they will get on. Sometimes it’s fun to introduce those who would seem, on the face of it, not to have a lot in common with one another. Sometimes it’s fraught with danger.

So what could possibly go wrong in introducing my best friend of thirty-something years, a Quaker elder and pillar of society, to a more recent but just as good friend who swears like a trooper, calls a spade a bloody shovel and likes a drink, to put it mildly?

Any of you who have read my Sell the Pig series, or who follow me on social media, will already know the two ladies – I employ the term loosely – in question. For those who haven’t or who don’t, just to add to the confusion, they are both called Jill.

To make it a little easier to follow they will henceforth be referred to as Jill and Jilli and/or Doris. Jill is the Quaker. I’ve known her since the 1980s when I owned a riding centre on top of a Welsh mountain (see Trot On! in the Sell the Pig series) and she first came as a customer.

You would have thought she’d have run a mile after that first encounter. After an enjoyable ride, we’d adjourned to the converted barn restaurant for a cup of tea. I would normally have offered cake but the piece of delicious Victoria sponge sitting tantalisingly on a plate in full view couldn’t be shared, for reasons which I was forced to explain when I saw Jill eyeing it hopefully.

Before leaving for the ride, I’d staked my claim on the last remaining slice of cake by picking it up in front of my two helpers at that time, Judy and Simon, and licking it, pointedly, before their eyes.

Somehow this early evidence of some of my bizarre and not always desirable habits didn’t seem to put Jill off too much. She returned regularly for rides, bought a horse I found for her and kept it at working livery with me. She rapidly became a good friend, soon to be my best friend.

She and I have been on many adventures together, including trail riding in the bandit-infested mountains of Corsica and in the Washakie Wilderness of Wyoming. We’ve had some pretty mad japes together. Sharing a leaking tent in bear country in the Rocky Mountains. Huddled up close, wet and not all that warm, wild camping under a bivouac in a Welsh forest.

Since I moved to France, more then eleven years ago as I write this, she has visited me every year and we’ve continued to have more than our fair share of mad capers under canvas, exploring the more remote corners of the Auvergne, central France, where I now live.

Note from Jill: an oft quoted Quaker advice is to Live adventurously. Over the years Tottie and I have embraced