Almost home....but it's been a LONG drive!

Hello everyone

Well, we're now well on our way home. After a reasonably early start (had to get up early to make sure the shed was clean and tidy before we handed the keys back!) we packed the car and headed off into Bourg d'Oisans for some fuel and some sandwiches to keep us going on the journey. They make good sandwiches here in France - real butter, lovely fresh French bread and plenty of filling...yummy! They are expensive though. I bought 2 cheese baguettes and 2 small bottles of soft drink and it cost over 13 Euros...that's about £12! It has been a great holiday but also an expensive one - 2 cognacs and 2 coffees = £13; 2 trips up the cable car at Mont Blanc = £90+; restaurant meal for 2 of pizzas, ice cream and a drink = £50; - as I said, it is expensive here.
We set off from the town at 9.45am this morning and headed north. We took a slightly different route back than the one we drove a week ago, using different toll roads/ring roads and recording the time and miles for future reference. We drove 567 miles (from our hotel near the channel tunnel in France) south to our campsite in 10 hours (including stops) and drove 569 miles back to the same hotel in 9 hours. We paid around 70 Euros in tolls each way.

I'm sat in our room at the Holiday Inn at Coquelles typing this update. We've eaten a meal on the way up France so that we didn't have to pay hotel prices for food but I suspect we're going to head to the extortionately priced hotel bar soon - you can't put a price on a cold beer after almost 600 miles of driving in 29 degrees of heat (outside, that is...we had the air con on in the car!). We've kept our sandwiches (the ones we bought in Bourg d'Oisans this morning) stashed in the coolbox which we've had plugged into the car during the journey. We've just eaten them along with tomatoes, cheese, crisps and some chocolate biscuits - more than enough to keep us ticking along until breakfast here in the morning!

Our train under the channel is due at 9.20 tomorrow morning so we'll be up and out of the hotel by 8.15am. It is only a 15 min drive to the terminal but we may want to browse the duty free shop for a few minutes before our journey. We have about 50 Euros left in the purse and don't really want to bring them home and lose money when converting them back into sterling so we may blow them on duty free - although, to be honest, things are so expensive over here that even with the duty removed you could probably buy them for the same money at home. We may just spend the money in the bar here at the hotel instead...!

I've no pictures to show you of today's trip, I'm afraid - one autoroute looks pretty much like any other autoroute and that is all we've seen for most of the day. The hotel is a typical Holiday Inn - nothing offensive but nothing worth photographing either.

Oh well - time to chill now (that's code for "we're off to the bar"!) and try to get some feeling back into our buttocks after sitting for all those hours. Will finish my blog entry now and will probably be in good old Blighty when I next get to log on.
Our French holiday was lovely and very enjoyable. I'm hoping to put some stuff on this blog when on our other trips and holidays this year - a few days in London; a week in Skye; almost 3 weeks in San Francisco, Las Vegas and Los Angeles (I bet there's no problem finding plenty of wifi spots in the cities but I'm not holding out much hope for Skye...but you never know!).

See you then..?

Take care

D&M
xx