2024 September: France and Spain – Home to Oye Plage

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Thursday 29th August 2024 we are up at 6.00am, breakfast and on our away by just after 8.00am. South on M6 to Bamber Bridge Preston, to fill with diesel at Sainsbury’s, the best price around. Back on M6 south to Keele services without any delays, where we stop for coffee. With a change of drivers, south again on M6, a bit of a delay north of Birmingham with the usual queue at Hilton Park. South on M5 past Castle Bromwich, Fort Dunlop Rubber and Bromsgrove, to M42/M40 then a stop just after 1.00pm at Cherwell Valley services near Oxford. A change of driver again and south to join M25.

About an hour delay getting around M25 to M20 arriving at Folkestone and Le Shuttle around 4.30pm (check-in time is 17.18 for our crossing at 18.18). Check-in is quiet and they put us on an earlier crossing at 17.18. No queueing, no waiting, we proceed almost immediately and without any delay to passport control and security, again no delays, no searches of Hymer and straight to the holding area. We are near the front so board quickly and are away perhaps a few minutes late. Arriving at Calais 35 minutes later just before dusk, our travel time including the crossing is about 2.5 hours (the entire check-in and crossing an hour less than it takes us to board the ferry on our return journey!).

It is 7.00pm (plus one hour), the sun a globe of orange and yellow fire above the horizon and not long to setting. We don’t bother going to Gravelot Aire de Camping, but drive north to Oye Plage and the bird reserve, it is deserted. Later we see a VW campervan parked under the trees in the Bird Reserve car park (we don’t fit under 2.0m height barrier), otherwise we are the only ones parked there overnight. We open a bottle of white Rioja and make chicken stirfry with the leftovers from home… yum!

All the migrating birds: black-headed gulls and terns have gone, no geese either, it is totally silent and very eerie without their constant squawking and screeching as they fly overhead to the bird lakes, their bills loaded with food for their chicks.