After months of excitement and planning the day is finally here, we leave for our tour of Europe. I have to confess it was very emotional leaving home, and I did shed a tear or two!
I had booked us in to The Dog House in Smeeth for our last night in the UK. I found this micro pub in Britstops and it is only about 20 minutes from the tunnel. We had a good journey down and arrived mid afternoon.
That evening we went into the bar for dinner. The food was home cooked and really tasty. The bar was really quaint with a massive selection of vinyl records. The walls were covered in pictures of dogs, well I guess it did used to be a vets. There was an outside seating area with blankets and hot water bottles.
It was really quiet overnight but that didn’t stop me waking up every hour, nerves or excitement?
We were both up super early and our train wasn’t booked until 11.20am (I had been worried about oversleeping when I booked it!) We headed off for breakfast to a café on route called The Airport Café, where, we had been told, served the best breakfast around. They weren’t wrong, the bacon roll was huge.
Before heading to the tunnel we made a slight detour to fill up with diesel. The first really stressful moment of the day when a car blocked us in. Donald said I could get out but I didn’t think I could. After a few minutes, and a bit of careful manoeuvring, we were back on the road.
Next stop Eurotunnel. The barriers you have to drive through seemed really narrow, but we got through without gaining any more ‘adventure stripes’ on the side of the van. We got through check in but as we hadn’t uploaded our passport details we had to park up and go into the terminal.
Next was passport control, two lots, one English and one French, where my passport received it’s first stamp, Donald didn’t as he is still European.
We were then pulled over into security for a search. I panicked a little as I still had the remains from a pint of milk in the fridge that I had forgotten to throw away. New rules mean you can’t take any meat or dairy out of England now. Luckily they just wanted to check we had turned off the gas.
Next was onto the train. Again it was narrow, now it made sense that the barriers were narrow, if you can’t fit through them you wouldn’t get on the train.
The journey was really quick, and in less than half an hour we were in Calais. First stop the supermarket to stock up on food and wine. I also needed to get some tobacco but soon realised they don’t sell it in the supermarket! We had a quick look on google maps and found a tobacco store (Le Tabac) 5 minutes away so a short divert was in order and panic averted. Note to self – Next time buy them in duty free.
20 minutes later we arrived at our camp site for the next two nights. Camping St Louis just outside Calais. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that not only was the restaurant open, but they also had a saxophonist playing that night.
Now time to chill for a couple of days.
Mileage – 116
Route – M25/Eurotunnel
The Dog House – Free
Camping Saint Louis – €35.20 for 2 nights with EHU
