2018-09-06 Home to Portsmouth

Home to Caen via Brittany Ferries

Home to Porstmouth and the ferry to Caen.

September 2018 the arrival of cool mornings followed by warm sunny days. Our apple tree is covered in large ripe apples, they need to be picked because we expect to be away most of the month. We pick them, then drop some off with friends nearby before packing the Hymer.

Day one of our motorhome trek through France and Northern Spain, it begins with our ‘normal’ journey to the south coast. What a pain it is living so far from the south coast, I have always thought that we who live north of Watford should be subsidised when we travel to Europe. We have such a long way to go, for the sake of equality, I know that is something that is close to the heart of many, the subsidy should extend only as far as the northern border of England. It would be up to the devolved government north of that border to decide whether or not people living under their jurisdiction should receive any subsidy. Such a subsidy would do a lot to ‘level up’ the north relative to the south and would be a true innovation, after all the Scottish have ferries that are priced on the basis of equivalent road travel costs, so why not extend that to other modes of transport for the English?

Those of you who are regular readers will recognise my humour, of course real humour is no longer possible in the era of political correctness because no matter how careful one is, the humour of today will become the unacceptable tomorrow.

And for those who understand XML I’ll conclude this section with </rant>.

We are up early this morning, the clock was set for 04:59, normally that time does not exist as far as I am concerned, but today is different. We are catching the ferry from Portsmouth heading for Caen, a 5 hour crossing that should get us into France today, then we can spend the night at the aire at Caen giving us an early start tomorrow as we start our journey south east through France. We’ll be taking our time, we have plenty of time and seeing as much as possible of France. In reality I did not need the alarm, I was awake at 0445, waiting for the sound. Final packing complete we left home at 0630, later than we hoped, but early enough. I drove the first 3 hours, heading south on the M6, that apology for a road that now consists of one section of roadworks after another. Gill drove the rest of the way to Portsmouth, ferry port, checked in and then began the inevitable waiting. Our 1300 ferry finally got away at 1445, but managed to catch up time and arrived at 2030 local time. We are on the ship, I had 10 large prawns in shells as a starter, looking forward to crevettes which we hope will be on offer in the French supermarkets. What a wonderful prospect, crevettes and a bottle of chilled white wine while sitting outside in the warm sunshine at a motorhome aire somewhere in France, peaceful and quiet, well away from the beaten track.

We have a cabin even though this is only a 5-hour crossing, it costs only slightly more than a couple of reclining seats, but worth having because it gives us a private space where we can be away from the world.

We were off the ferry fairly quickly, then made the short drive to the aire de camping cars at Ouistreham, paid our €10 and in we went. The aire was packed with motorhomes. I can never understand why the concept of a motorhome aire has not caught on in England. There are thousands of motorhomes and when their owners are out and about they all need somewhere to stop for the night.

Sleep came easily, I don’t remember a thing except putting my head on the pillow.