If we start our travels in reverse order as in the newest first it might give us more time to remember our older campervan based adventures.
The latest one is our trip to France to actually visit our new house there. We had to self isolate for 10 days on the way back which was an experience all of it’s own.
Planning our trip to Lussac Les Eglises
If anyone has planned a visit to a France whilst in the restrictions of Covid they might know just how complex and frustrating it is.
First getting the van ready our van had decided that it wanted to keep 5 gears but wanted to get rid of 5th and have a 6th gear ! It’s true on a short trip to the vets our normal 5 speed gearbox became a 6 speed one but without 5th ! We used the van like this for quite a while but quickly agreed that it should have a new gearbox. £1700 pounds lighter our van now had a proper fully functioning 6 speed gearbox with a new clutch to go with it. So now we had a van ready for the 1600 (approx) miles round trip.
Getting the Covid tests was much harder than getting the van sorted and only marginally cheaper ! But after a lot of frustration and over £500 we had our tests in the UK sorted. After nearly missing our first appointment in Boots Bangor Carol had to Run to the Chemists whilst I parked our car.
With the first test done we got a negative result the next day which just left packing and handing our two Goldies over to our lovely neighbours, Ellie and Matt, who were going to look after them for the two weeks we were away.
So on the 3rd of July after saying goodbye to our Grandaughter we started the journey to the Shuttle. Instead of travelling through the night we stayed at a service station closer to Folkestone and paid £15 to park there over night. The next morning we drove into the Euroshuttle bright an early enough to be put on an earlier slot.
Sadly that earlier slot didn’t actually turn out to get us onto the shuttle any earlier as a strike by French border officials had gone on strike and this resulted in a massive back up which took hours to get though.
The Shuttle trip was quick and easy, once on french soil everything was much quicker. We stopped at an Aires, completely free with water toilets etc etc for an overnight rest. The nexy day all was going well until my satnav routed me through the Paris Peripherique which was basically a car park for the next two hours. Once through this the roads were clear and we quickly made it to our house in France.
