Homeward bound - Friday/Saturday 15/16 June, 2018


Up at 7am and on our way back to the UK at 10 am, after a quick tidy-up and inventory of what we were leaving behind (and therefore didn’t need to bring in our luggage next time).

Being a Friday and given the experience of the Peripherique on the way down, we chose to add a nominal 90-minutes to our journey and return via Chartres and Rouen. The journey was uneventful other than for a diversion off a closed section of motorway and a traffic-jam in Rouen that was as bad as the previous one on the Peripherique (though the traffic was far more civilised).

We eventually reached the Chateau de Quesmy at around 7 pm – so a 9-hour journey including a 30-minute stop. Alas, the restaurant on the chateau grounds was not open on a Friday night and so ‘dinner’ was nuts, yogurts, fruit, and orange juice – that we had brought from the house.

View from our window at the chateau
Up at 6:30 on Saturday morning and a 2.5 hour drive to Calais for the EuroTunnel. We arrived early enough to join the train prior to the one we were booked on – though joining two slow moving queues had us convinced we would miss it and join the crossing we had booked initially. As it was, we did make the earlier crossing and then took the 3.5 hour drive back to the Midlands – enduring yet more traffic jams on the M1 (I’m fairly convinced the variable speed limits compounded (if not caused) the delays.

So the end of a very enjoyable two and a bit weeks – and already starting to plan the next visit for July.

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