Bonjour!

We drove to the channel tunnel (Le Shuttle) about 6 minutes away from the Drum Inn and checked in. The system used automatic number plate recognition so it came up with my name on the screen and all we had to do was verify 2 adults , no pets. As we were early we were offered the Train before (30 minutes earlier then our booked time) so we took it.

Seemed really weird driving the van into a train.

St Valery-sur-Somme

Drove about 2 hours to our first stop near St Valery-sur-Somme and used a camping carpark for the night. It didn’t go too smoothly, poor Mandy was standing at the console entering the code which wouldn’t work, the barrier stayed down, it took 3 attempts to get it to work, all the time we were holding up another van behind us! Turns out it wasn’t just us as, we watched other people have the same issue. Met a lovely Dutch lady on her travels who was parked next to us, she is travelling alone with just her 2 dogs, she was fascinated by what we were doing

Had our best nights sleep, not sure if it was exhaustion from the long day before or the good fresh sea air but up and about early to move on, we watched a French couple struggle to leave as again the barriers were not working, they had to call online support but were stuck at the gate for over 20 minutes. We were nervous when it was our turn and when the code didn’t work we got onto the phone for help straight away, using our pigeon french managed to get some help and they lifted the barrier to let us out.

Once free we drove back into St Valery-sur-Somme. It is a beautiful old town built on an estuary, we ordered out first cafe au lait of the trip and managed to get two coffees so did something right!

We also did our first shop at a supermarche, they are very good and we stocked up on pastries and wine.

Didn’t realise that this was the place that the Duke of Normandy (William the Conqueror) launched his attack on England in 1066

Veulettes-sur-mer

The following day we drove about 90 minutes to a small sea-side town called Veulettes-sur-mer. This was just to break up our trip towards Normandy. It’s a lovely little place the sun was out but so was the wind! it has white cliffs just like the south of England.

We stayed at our first French Campsite tonight. Not any more expensive than a camping car park and very very clean and a nice tidy site. Interestingly the toilets don’t have any seats, toilet paper, soap or hand dyers/paper towels. Supply your own!! The lady in charge is constantly cleaning, while Baz was sitting on the toilet she has sweeping the floor including reaching under the door of the cubicle he was in 🙂 they are also not segregated so men and woman all use the same space, very different to the UK sites we have been on.