On the Road Again!

What a couple of days these turned out to be!! The rough plan was to leave Bernay and with only 60 miles to the vets in Buchy, to call in somewhere on the way.  I had toyed with the idea of Monet's Garden at Giverny, but it doubled the mileage to Buchy. On top of that we had a long drive to Calais and the CCP after the vet. Instead I saw the Le Bec Hellouin was en route. So we set off.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Bec-Hellouin A few miles short I began to shiver and feel really cold.  By the time we had followed the signs to the campervan parking it was much worse. It's a long wa...

We are booked on the Irish Ferries service from Calais at 1235pm on the last day of the trip.  When we came back from France last October, we stayed in the Camping-Car Park aire in Calais . It's a large area with 102 pitches. It's perfectly placed for a walk along the seafront after arrival and close to the ferry port. I have pre-booked it. It's a long way off but it will be July and aires get quite full.  Including local tourist taxes it is €17.50 for the night. When you book they expect you to enter an arrival time. In the past they didn't have to.  So as we need to be at the ferry port around 1100am at the latest, I have booked for an arrival time the day before at 1200.  And to cover our butts, a leaving time of 1100am. So that's another booking sorted.

If you want to use the Tesco Clubcard vouchers you have saved up for a year to use against a crossing you have to phone them. Getting the vouchers converted into the right format to use though takes about 30 seconds on the Tesco Clubcard website. There is an online booking system but that's for debit or credit cards sales only! It's a bit antiquated that you can enter the voucher codes online. So today I tried several times.  The first time before lunch the average wait time was 57 minutes. I gave up as I was going to be going out. The second time later in the afternoon and it was up to 1h 17m. I gave up and thought as they are open until 6pm I would try at around 5pm. Apparently the average wait is 30 minutes....  I have been told after 40 minutes that I have less than 30 seconds to wait...44 minutes, still 30 seconds.... Why the urgency?  There is supposed to be an offer when you book but when I got through around 50 minutes it was only one offer. The £18...

Booked the ferries. Or rather the crossings. Out on Le Shuttle with Neill and Phil on 27th June at 0820.  We need to be there an hour before but personally I think 90 minutes would be better! We have to get through French passport control to get our Schengen border stamps. Returning 5 days later on the Irish Ferries route from Calais at 1750. It's quite late but I  want to give myself plenty of time to get back to Calais from Assen in one hit and then get through the marvellous disaster known at the UK Passport control. Not to mention the French clowns stamping my Schengen exit! All the holdups courtesy of those that voted leave in 2016 and the useless politicians on both sides that created this mess.

With it being Easter Sunday we had been unable to secure a day trip with Eurotunnel. We could have had a short stay trip for £94.50. Instead we decided to go with P&O for £34.50.  So to make it to Dover for the 8.25am meant getting up early. It's Sunday after all. So when the alarm went at 5.55am it was a struggle. I needed to be at Dover at least 60 minutes before sailing.   So I was away by 6.25am. The V-Strom starting first prod and we were away. It was foggy on the M20 and A20 but luckily the holdups over the holiday weekend had mostly gone. Getting through French passport controls took around 30 minutes. It would have helped had Dover Port have had some staff on duty to marshal the queues. It was chaos. I met up with fellow travellers in Team Meldrews' members, Phil on his R1250RT and my brother Neill on his K16. We were loaded quite quick, and first on. We retired to the lounge for the 90 minutes crossing. It was foggy until a couple of miles off the French coas...

The last day. We had to be up early as the mobil-home had to be cleaned and the floor washed before we could get one of the staff to come over and check that we hadn't broken or stolen anything.... We had checked the inventory on arrival and they check it when we leave.  Many of the FB and TripAdvisor comments seemed to find this strange. We hadn't used any of their bedding as we had taken sleeping bags and our own pillows, plus throws to stop Reggie leaving hair or mud on the furniture. We brushed round and then I washed the floor with the sachet of hospital cleaning grade cleaner they had left.  We eventually left about 1015.  First stop the recycling bins and then off towards home. A coffee stop again a Baie de Somme.  Reggie had people laughing as he was looking in the water out back when a huge carp swam towards him. He jumped in the air like his legs were springs. After that he wouldn't near the edge, not even to bark or growl at the ducks. And then we were off...