A EUROPEAN ROADTRIP
My wife and I were setting off on a two week European road trip that would take us from our Essex home in the UK, through France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany, we would cover a total of 1,300 miles, and stay in six different hotels in four countries.
We have ventured on many a road trip in the past, throughout Europe and the UK, and even driven the Great Ocean Road in Australia, but this was to be our first trip away since 2019, prior to the Covid pandemic, and to say that we were somewhat anxious about the trip would be an understatement.
There seemed to be a lot more preparation needed than on our previous road trips, due to Brexit and Covid. At the time that we were putting together the trip, it was necessary for us to apply for an NHS Covid Pass, but this is no longer necessary. We also had to apply for International Driving Permits (IDP) as we both have the old style paper driving licence, not a photo card. To establish if we needed IDPs or not took several emails and social media messages to the French, German and Belgium Embassies, none of which could give us a definitive answer. The best advise we got was from the French Embassy who, although could not say for sure, advised us that it may be best for us to apply for an IDP, to be on the safe side!
We were also shocked by how much prices had gone up in the last two years, our travel insurance alone had trebled in price, and hotels also seemed more expensive than we remembered, and as for petrol costs, they were astronomical compared to previous trips!
The route that we planned to take would take us through Belgium and Luxembourg so we decided to cross the channel from Dover to Dunkirk, this would save about 25 miles of driving, but would mean a two hour crossing as opposed to a 90 minute crossing if we had chosen to travel Dover to Calais. Total journey time would be much the same, but we would save a little on fuel costs, and it was a journey we hadn't done before, and we are always game to try something new.
We chose DFDS for our channel crossings. As one of Northern Europe's biggest ferry operators, and with up to 54 crossings a day, DFDS are a major player in transporting goods and people from the UK to the Continent. Their ferries are modern and spacious, with all the facilities the traveller needs for a comfortable crossing.
We couldn't have hoped for a better start to our journey, the weather was good and, having stayed the previous night at the Holiday Inn at Dover, we had a quick and easy drive to the port. The sun was shining and all was looking good for the journey ahead. That was until we were ushered into the customs shed at Dover....My first thought was “how on earth are they going to check all our luggage?”, we were packed to the gunnels with suitcases and all the things we would need for our journey, and quite a few things we wouldn't! However, the young customs officer just carried out a routine check under the car, a quick check in the boot and only asked for one item to be put through their scanning machine, we were then soon on our way and in no time at all we were on the ferry, relaxing in very comfortable chairs and whiling away the two hours by exploring the ship, and simply looking out the window at the astonishingly calm sea.
Having gone through French passport control in Dover, once we arrived in Dunkirk we were immediately on our way to our first overnight stay at The Ibis Styles Namur in Belgium. We arrived early evening, so after checking in we went for dinner in the hotel's restaurant Le Felicien. We enjoyed a wonderful meal, served by some very attentive and friendly staff, before retiring to a most comfortable, well equipped room.
Our longest stay in any of the hotels was in Freiburg at The Hotel Zum Schiff. We had visited Freiburg on many occasions in the past and this was to be our third stay at the Hotel Zum Schiff, which although in need of refurbishment, which incidentally has now begun, is a very friendly family run hotel, and ideally suited to our needs, it also has a very good restaurant serving excellent food.
There are many wonderful places to visit whilst in Freiburg, including Tittisee with it's large lake and abundance of water sports, to the nearby ski resort of Hinterzarten, a lovely picturesque town, always worth a visit.
On our return journey we stopped off at Colmar in Alsace, this is a region of France that borders Germany and has a real mix of French and German influence. Colmar, with its beautiful old timbered buildings and network of rivers, put me in mind of Bruges in Belgium We spent several hours here before setting off for our overnight stay at The Ibis Styles Nancy Sud.
Having had a good nights sleep and a very good breakfast, we set off from Nancy for our final stay at The Hotel Kyriad in Saint Quentin, but on the way I wanted to explore the wine making area of Epernay and Le Mesnil Sur Oger. These were both places that featured in my adolescence, as a sixteen year old I had worked for two weeks picking grapes in this area, and this was the first time that I had been back there, almost exactly 48 years to the day! I reminisced as we enjoyed driving around the area, viewing the sprawling vineyards which spread out before us as far as the eye could see, memories came flooding back of those far off, care free days of youth.
For the most part we saw very little other traffic, partly due to the fact that it was a Sunday. We did however have a couple of incidents, one being mayor diversions due to a road closure, the other due to a fallen tree across the road, necessitating a Police road block and traffic control. But despite these little irritants and the unexpected diversion through the centre of Rimes, we arrived in plenty of time at our hotel in order to have a leisurely dinner in the nearby restaurant, before retiring for the night.
Alarms were set for 05:30 the next morning as we wanted to have an early start to arrive in Calais in plenty of time for our ferry. It was a good thing we had given ourselves plenty of time, as once again we were faced with thick fog! Thankfully, after about an hour the fog started to lift and the sun broke through the clouds. We arrived in Calais in plenty of time as planned, which meant we could spend some time browsing in the excellent, newly opened Duty Free Shop in Calais.
The border controls in France can be a little confusing if you haven't travelled since before Brexit, you now have to go through two sets of Passport controls, first the French control and then the UK control. Very time consuming, but it does mean that once you arrive in Dover, you drive straight off the ferry and on your way without further delays.
My wife and I were one of the first vehicles to board and for a while we thought we were in for another quiet crossing. We headed straight to the 7 Seas restaurant for lunch but were told that the restaurant would not start serving food for another ten minutes, my wife found us a table by the window, whilst I went to take some photographs of the ferry for this review. When I returned, no more than ten minutes later, the restaurant was full of teenagers on a school trip, there were literally hundreds of them, all queuing up to be served food. It was only in the last fifteen minutes of the crossing that they left the restaurant to return to their coaches, only then were my wife and I finally able to grab ourselves some sandwiches and bottled water to take to our car to eat on the drive home.
If it hadn't been for the overwhelming influx of coach passengers, then this would have been a very pleasant crossing, the sea was, once again, very calm, and the ferry is a very nice ship, with many good facilities, which under normal circumstances would have made the crossing a very comfortable one.
Although, not without incident, our European Road Trip went very well, for our first adventure since the Covid Pandemic, we are happy with how things went, We were very pleased with our choice of hotels and with our decision to travel with DFDS, the weather, as always, could have been better, but we have no control over that, we were very pleased with the route we took and we would certainly consider the same route again.
You can read my review of Crossing the channel with DFDS by following this link: World Travel Reviews: TRAVEL BY CAR FROM THE UK TO FRANCE (independentworldtravelreviews.blogspot.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment