My younger nephew and his partner were there, having spent the weekend, although my sister was out with her friend. They were finishing their weekend, though and left fairly soon.
The Swan Whisperer got the motor home and, because we had plenty of time, he made up the beds and did most of the unpacking/putting away. I came through to put my clothes away, and was delighted to find my cream-coloured blanket wrap and the penguin blanket I use over my duvet on cold nights. I am unlikely to need either of them this holiday, but you never know! As it was, I changed into shorts, which was a mistake in the long run as my legs got cold on the drive.
I had to take the Zoom service at "The other" Clapham, and the SW, my mother and my sister (who was back by then) watched on his computer in the other room. When it was over, we had supper, including "deconstructed Eton mess", which was basically a meringue, strawberries and cream!
After supper, we headed on. I had discovered that one can spend the night in the car park of Folkestone sports centre, so we decided to do that and cross very early this morning. I am very glad we did, as the M20 took ages - for some reason they decided to send all traffic at 30 mph down the hard shoulder instead of letting cars go in 2 outside lanes at 50 and lorries on the inside lane and hard shoulder at 30. All 11 miles of it! Not fun. I was beyond exhausted when we arrived, and as I was slightly cold, hadn't really been able to nap on the journey.
Of course, I didn't sleep very well, but we had to get up at 05:30 to have our showers and a cup of tea before we set off just after 06:30 to get to the terminal. The Satnav told us to go up the motorway and down again, and we couldn't think why, as all the signposts pointed us a different way. It wasn't until we got to the other entry that we found it was closed! You would have thought it would have said earlier, wouldn't you. We were not impressed!
The terminal was absolutely heaving, and it took forever to get through French passport ontrol. When we did, though, we found we could go straight on to the Shuttle, and, in fact, they triaged us on to the front coach!
We ate breakfast on the crossing and, as soon as we arrived, we went to Cité Europe where Carrefour was open in spite of its being a Bank Holiday here. I did a shopping while the Swan Whisperer got diesel, and then we set off "properly". We stopped at a random "aire" on the motorway as the SW felt tired and needed ten minutes' sleep, and then drove on to Landrecies, where we stopped for lunch. We have been here before; it is just by a river
- the Sambre - and there are anglers, although what they hoped to catch with the sun beating down on the water, I do not know.
After lunch, we headed on to Reims, where we used the services, while I walked down to the actual parking area (should have put my sandals on - it was a long way in my flip-flops, but I forgot!). There were no spaces, as we had feared there might not be, so Plan B was nearby Chamery, another favourite stopover. There was room for us here!
The vines are looking very green; so refreshing after the dry and brown of everywhere else.
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