This entire post I was tempted to dub the 'Dover Disaster' but decided it was a little too harsh as it did begin rather well. We had decided to do a week long trip to France - Joy, Brad, Harvey and I.
I was basically tagging along as I was staying with Joy and needed to be in France the next week anyway, so they very kindly offered to drop me in Lille at the end, and that I could tag along for free - Amazing!!! They had booked a late morning ferry so we would have time to drive to our location in France and not arrive too late, so we left extremely early in the morning (it was over five hours of driving to get to Dover generally) so as to beat the traffic. Getting up at 3am was really not my favourite thing, but due to the summer hours the sun was rising as we left around 4am.
Everything went well, we arrived early and took in the view of the Castle! It was extremely expensive to go inside so although we had the time we decided to enjoy it from afar.
We stopped for a quick coffee to rejuvenate ourselves and wandered around the town. I stumbled across this church which I thought was really pretty, and for once the sun was shining!
With still more time to kill (It was either be on the road for over six hours stuck in traffic, or leave ridiculously early to avoid all traffic but also arrive extremely early) we decided to go up to the cliffs of Dover as there was meant to be a scenic view. There was a small charge of 2 pounds to take the car through the cliff side drive which I initially thought was rather outrageous but thinking about it I suppose they need it for the upkeep of all the land up there. And it was very cheap when split between people.
From the progression of these pictures, you would think we happily hopped on the ferry and were away. Alas, it was not so. Upon arriving early at the ferry terminal and waiting in line to check in, we finally discovered via the unhelpful ticket lady (Direct Ferries were extremely uncaring of everyone's plight) that the ferry company was closed for the day as the workers were striking and had actually blockaded off Calais to stop other ferry companies running! Feeling the stirrings of panic, we decided to ring the Euro-tunnel to see if we could simply drive through and therefore lose very little time. The problem was upon ringing we were informed it would be impossible to go through, cars were gridlocked and strikers had made a wall of tires to keep cars out, and set them on fire.
Completely panicking by this stage, we rang every company we could, but we were put on hold for so long we went looking for a ticket office instead. Finally we were able to find a ferry company to take us to Dunkirk, but by that point we were so late we weren't sure what we would do. We jumped on the ferry anyway, to try and reach France as soon as possible.
Arriving into Dunkirk the weather was much sunnier and it felt warmer too. Even though it was late in the day our moods had improved and we went above deck to watch the boat docking.
Unfortunately by the time we got off the ferry it was rather late - about five hours later than our original ferry would have been. Disaster! We ended up staying in an airbnb in Reims which took so long to get to in itself we were exhausted upon arrival. Instead of having a long afternoon relaxing in the sun we arrived with the last of the sunlight, rushed to a supermarket to get some food, and ended up sitting on the balcony sipping champagne and watching the sunset. It was a lovely end to an otherwise stressful day.
No comments:
Post a Comment