The length of France in a Day!

We calculated that to reach Calais for our Channel tunnel train at 10.20pm Saturday we would need to leave our hotel no later than 8am. Our route planner said it was 13 hours and 13 mins and we had, of course, to factor in stops every 3 hours for the pups and allow time incase we encountered traffic, especially the closer we got to Paris.

I had asked about breakfast when we had finally checked in the night before only to be told it was served from 9am. OK, so we would need to find somewhere for breakfast on the road. The reception would be open at 8.30am so we would also need to leave before they were open for us to pay!

Mmmmmh!

I had given our credit card details when I checked in and so I wrote a note in my best Spanish to say we had needed to leave early for our channel crossing and would they charge our room to the card and if there were any problems to ring me on my mobile and slid it under the door to reception.

We left hoping we would not be challenged by the Guardia at the border for trying to leave the country without paying our bills.

As we left the hotel complex and started back along the country lanes we came to a junction. To retrace our steps last night we should have turned right but Neil felt we could probably get back onto our route better by turning left. 50 yards along this lane we came to a main road, only to find it was the lane we had used to turn around in last night and if they had put a sign at this junction we would have saved an hour driving around in the dark and had an extra hour in bed.

We called at the first service station to refuel the car and ourselves and then we were on our way, heading for the border between Spain and France.

The border crossing was huge, there must have been 24 lanes and being a Saturday, there was plenty of traffic there. It took us a few seconds to work out which lane we needed and queued behind several cars towing caravans. We had to keep remembering about the top box so we didn't go under anything with a height restriction.

And so we were in France.

By now we were ready for a break and a re-fuel so we pulled into the first services. As Neil went in to pay and to get some coffees I walked the pups around and then gave them a drink. Now, our dogs have a talent for drinking from of a bottle and this saves carrying dishes about. As I was giving them a drink several people smiled at how cute they looked.

One chap stopped to talk to me and this is when life got a little surreal. He was French. I don't speak French. He didn't speak English BUT he was married to a Spanish lady and so we found our common language for a conversation was Spanish. I never expected to find my Spanish studies would come in handy while travelling through France.

I have to say the area that we travelled through in the south of France was beautiful and there was some very striking scenery, huge bridges across ravines and very pretty villages. It helped pass the time as we made our way north.

We kept our stops to a minimum and by the time we approached Paris we were making good time. We were due to take the outer ringroad around Paris and I knew my navigation skills would be tested to their extreme.

There were many road numbers to look for and Neil did a great job switching lanes as we went from 3 lanes to 6 lanes to 4 lanes, as lanes left and more joined. I kept a close eye on the signs overhead and guided him to the right lane for the road numbers indicated on my printed route.

And then all of a sudden none of the road signs had the right numbers on, none of the places quoted were on my list and I had to make a snap decision.

And it was the wrong decision!

Suddenly we were on the inner ringroad on a Saturday afternoon and within minutes we were at a standstill. We then crawled around Paris anti-clockwise. We needed to follow signs out of Paris for Lille and the overhead neon-signs were telling us that we were 45 minutes from the junction and there was nothing we could do but sit in traffic and crawl along with the thousands of other cars trying to get away from Paris.

Suddenly, our channel crossing looked unlikely. As we left the inner ringroad and joined the motorway to Lille our routeplanner told us we had 3 hours 30 minutes drive to our destination and we had 2 hours and 30 minutes to our check in time.

All we could do was hope there were no more hold ups and no police about. Neil put his foot to the floor and I avoided looking at the speedometer and kept my eyes peeled for speed cameras. Instead of arriving with time to spare we would be lucky to make it before the train departed.

We needed some luck to be on our side!