Alsace Wine Tour – Calais to Burford And Home
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Calais to Burford
An early start today; alarm set for 5 am so that we can have coffee then drive the short distance from the aire de camping cars in Calais to the Eurotunnel terminal for our early train. We leave at 5:40 am, planning to drive all the way back home to Lancaster, over 300 miles, but we have done it many times so we’re not put off by the distance.
The Eurotunnel check-in procedure goes well, no delays, the French customs officer comes into the Hymer via the back door, opens the wardrobes and looks inside, then the bathroom. I offer to lift up the access door to the main side lockers, he says non, not necessary. We drive on, passports stamped to show our exit from France. The entry and exit stamps and very neatly positioned next to each other on one page of our passports.
We drive around and reach the final check — our gas bottles. Eurotunnel staff are diligent in making sure that the gas is turned off at the main stopcocks, quite rightly so. I stop and the office watches me turn the taps then off we go into the holding lanes. Not long and we are moving again, onto the train. We are the first vehicle so we look down the complete length of the empty train, I drive slowly all the way to the end. Eventually a couple of other early risers drive up behind us. Procedures completed the train leaves and soon the are back in the UK driving on the left once more.
The motorway is congested despite the time being only 6:30am (UK time), we drive on. After 6 hours of driving we have covered less than half the distance to home, we are near Oxford. We are both tired and decide that getting home is too much to drive today. Under normal circumstances we would be around Preston after 6 hours on the road. We have stayed in Oxfordshire recently so I phone ahead to a great site in Burford and make a reservation for tonight. We start to relax a little.
We spend an interesting afternoon around Burford. The walk from Wysdom Touring Park into Burford takes you down ‘The Hill’, aptly named. The street is very picturesque, especially at the higher end near the campsite, lower down the street is lined with shops selling a variety of interesting items at tourist prices. Burford church is definitely worth visiting, the interior has many unusual features — see photos for some of them. We sat by the river for some time relaxing in the warm sunshine, reflecting on our tour through France to the Alsace, wondering why there was so much traffic on the UK motorways. We purchase a bottle of Languedoc red wine from the Co-Op on the high street, an uninspiring choice, but we don’t want to dip into our purchases yet, they are securely packed away in the Hymer. We wander back to our motorhome then sit outside.
Later Gill makes an evening meal.
Alsace Wine Tour – Overnight at Burford
Burford in Oxfordshire to Home in Lancaster
Our Alsace Wine Tasting tour of France has been a good trip. We discovered wine producers that we didn’t know, purchased a lot of excellent wine and visited places that we could not have seen without travelling in our motorhome. Many of the places that we stayed overnight were free of charge, the locations that we paid for were a fraction of the price we pay in the UK, and we did not have to pay any membership fees to large organisations. We encourage other motorhome owners who have not been to Europe to go, it’s easier than you imagine.