one last day, one last castle
by Rachael, who feels a bit sad at missing Scotland and Wales, but eager to embrace the sun
Calais, France
That was our plan anyway.
But first of all we had to suffer One Last English Rain – well, one downpour sufficiently heavy to confine us all to one van for half an hour until it eased off enough for occupants of The Other Van to find their travelling seats for the day. The rain itself would continue for much of the day!
Then (surprise!!) we encountered One Last English Traffic Jam. We were barely out of Folkestone, we’d just got through the tunnel and had started to crawl up the hill, when everything ground to a halt. Detectives in our midst surmised there had been an accident when an ambulance wriggled through the two stalled lanes of traffic. But the radio announced, “Chaos in Dover!” Yes, all the way to Dover was a thousands-and-thousands-of-vehicles traffic jam. Later in the day we would be atop the Dover hill and see it still stretching back around the coastline. The computers at the ferry terminal had gone down at seven in the morning, and twelve hours later they would still be playing catch-up, clearing the backlog. And not surprising it should take so long – look how many people had passed through Europe’s busiest port yesterday:
58,083 passengers
14,102 cars (including motorhomes)
8,148 lorries
243 coaches
So how did we manage to not be in it? One Last English Detour, of course! We zipped off the main road at the first available exit and back-roaded it all the way to Dover.
Straight on up to our One Last English Castle (in the pouring rain and howling wind – the wind, oh the wind – I watched it blow a toddler over and the children enjoyed standing on the edge of the cliff, leaning towards the drop, being supported by only the force of the wind…..until I saw them, that is! Generally speaking, I believe in taking calculated risks, but those kids got their mathematics wrong)
The castle provided us with One Last Formal Learning Opportunity – a most informative guided tour of the secret tunnels that were used during World War II and more recently during the Cold War, some having been first excavated centuries before – and One Last Informal Romp Around the Castle, no less educational.
(yes, the rain finally cleared)
Finally One Last English Meal. Can you guess what?
Followed by treacle tart as we sat in the queue for the ferry. We were fortunate to be slotted onto an earlier sailing than the one we had reservations for – had we booked the one we were put on, it would have cost us an extra thirty quid per vehicle, so, as per the website instructions, we had booked the 9:30 sailing and turned up early to see what would happen. The news was all good and we arrived in Calais well before the expected midnight. The motorhome park near the ferry was full so we found a quiet street and went to sleep, hoping Monsieur Gendarme would not move us on!
Time on the road: need to check Jboy13’s record!
Distance covered: 85km plus a ferry crossing
Tags: 2008/09, postcard: England, postcard: France
rayres
boohoo bye bye england! hmm something inherently wrong about having a great big sign for the hidden tunnels i reckon! lol…
enjoy the sun!! (nice capes too btw 😉 )
heehee nova – they’ve only put the sign there since the existence of the tunnels was made public (reasonably recently – since they worked out that the limestone would be no use in a nuclear attack – before they’d figured that one out, government was all set to hole up here after a nuclear attack!!!)
Anyway, the capes have been FANTASTIC!!!! Grandpa has a good pic of one on his blog!