All too soon it was necessary to pack up and leave, what was in all a fantastic weekend. The weather hadn’t put anyone off and people were already talking about coming back. We certainly were.

So after the last of our cooked breakfasts on site we gathered up the remains of the camping equipment, shoved it into the car and said our goodbyes. We left the site and headed towards the A28 and back up towards Rouen. A bit of a delay with people who either cannot use a toll booth or a totally overwhelmed peage….

With the tunnel just north of Rouen being resurfaced I decided to detour via a non-existent Carrefour and down by the industrial area. It’s a bit slow, but we avoided getting stuck on one of the two remaining bridges, the one that melted a couple of years back still hasn’t re-opened. August this year apparently.

So we drove around the west side of the city and out the top and headed to our favourite rest stop, the Aire Baie de la Somme. Which didn’t last long as the time lost in the queues meant we had to press on to make our tunnel crossing. I wished we hadn’t bothered.

Now, there were no radio announcements, no signs to inform us of what had happened, but the tunnel broke and there were some rather large delays. It looked a lot like this:

We were some of the earlier ones of course, which meant the over flow to the over flow was running out of space adding to the general air of disorganisation. Had we known a nice trio into Calais for a few hours would have been fine, even going off and staying another night would have been preferable.  Still, I managed a joke with the check in girl, saying that I hear that it’s faster than the boat….. I guess it is, if you are comparing it with the Hull to Zeebrugge ferry.

Somewhere around 7 hours for a 35 minute crossing had us wishing we could have stayed longer elsewhere or took the ferry, which upon returning to the UK we learn was an option. Oh well, it kind of wrote Tuesday off as I made it back to Mum’s in Norfolk after dropping Jim off at around 2:30 am. We made frequent stops though as both of us were a little tired. One of which was at Thurrock.

The total mileage for the trip was now a little over 1200, from leaving my home in Derbyshire to returning, which I thought was pretty good going all things considered.

And the car, well proven itself thoroughly. I wonder where it can take me next.