An early start
Although I'd set my alarm for 3.30am, I was up at about 2.45am and looking for the VW's V5 document that you really should take with you when you drive abroad. I hadn't taken it with us last year but I was reading posts on an online forum yesterday and that, together with your insurance documents and MOT, is apparently required in France! I didn't bother with the MOT or insurance as I can access them on my phone, but I put the V5 document in with the passports and felt a little calmer!
The cats were highly bemused about what I was doing and Gomez kept asking to go out... No way! I made myself a coffee, checked the route on Google Maps and discovered that half of the M25 was closed... Googly was telling us to go onto the North Circular!
Keith and Sophie then woke, and we all managed to get showered, dressed and ready by 4.30am. Now Googly was saying it was fine to go down the M11, M25 and M20!
We had a good journey down to Folkestone and managed to get on an earlier train. Boarding was imminent but that didn't stop Keith and Sophie legging it into the terminal to use the loos. Sophie came back and said she'd seen a woman in the toilets with a cat in a backpack! I'm not sure our two would be so chilled!
We had a bit of a wait to go through passport control and then we were driving onto the train. I immediately put the seat back and slept through most of the crossing. Bliss!
The empty roads of France
We were driving off Le Shuttle at about 9.30am and we made straight for the autoroute signposted Boulogne/Amiens/Rouen. The roads were quiet and soon we were passing through wide open fields with the occasional village. Keith, much to his great delight, started spotting buzzards on the fences lining the autoroute. I saw tall trees with mistletoe balls, so I was happy as well!
The temperature hovered between 4c and -1c so it was cold outside. The sky was grey, but rather than be disappointing, it added to the beauty of the bare, French countryside. We saw farmers working the fields and mounds of what looked like swedes or turnips covered with tarpaulin.
We decided to stop for coffee at the Baie de Somme aire, and what a difference it was to last September! There were only about a handful of people there and we saw the couple who had been in front of us on the train. He had hared off in his Mercedes in the same direction as us once off the train, so I have no idea how we came to be at the aire before him unless they'd stopped for fuel!
We enjoyed a hot chocolate to keep us warm and gazed out at the frigid landscape. There was a water feature in front of the dining area and it looked freezing cold!
Back in the car, we carried on along deserted roads and decided to stop for lunch at Honfleur. We were taking the same route as 2022 when we drove back from Spain and had to avoid Rouen, so I had a feeling we'd be going over the high bridge near Le Havre again. I was right! It's called the Pont de Normandie Bridge, it's 705 feet high, crosses the Seine River and links Honfleur with Le Havre.
It looked impossibly high and steep until you were actually on it, and the views were fantastic but I had both hands firmly on the wheel! The charge to cross, which was about 5 euros, made the traverse of our own Dartford bridge cheap in comparison!
Lunch in Honfleur
Once off the bridge, we followed signs to Honfleur and parked in a scruffy car park near the harbour. It was a short walk to the main area, where there were numerous bars, restaurants and shops. One lovely place looked cosy with log fires burning and lots of people enjoying their lunch.
We walked towards the harbour which was so pretty, its higgledy-piggedly buildings lining the marina where boats were moored up.
We were hungry and looking forward to a delicious French lunch. We were also conscious of the time as French restaurants generally don't serve food after about 1.30pm. We spotted a little bistro on the street leading away from the harbour and went in to see if they had a table. They did, and the two young men waiting were lovely, making sure we had menus we could understand and speaking to us in English, even though I was using my schoolgirl French! I think it was a family-run affair as an older man was directing operations and I bet Mum was the chef!
The restaurant was called Le Champlain and served traditional Normandy dishes. There were already several other tables occupied, and we chose from the three-course set menus.
Sophie and I chose exactly the same! We started with egg mayonnaise, rarely seen now in the UK, followed by chicken in a curry sauce served with salad and French fries. Keith opted for the fish soup, followed by fish and chips. We all ordered beers and settled down to enjoy a lovely lunch!
The food was very good, the ambience was lovely and the staff were friendly and hospitable. My only gripe was feeling cold and a roaring fire would have made the experience perfect! Sophie and I chose mousse au chocolat for dessert while Keith enjoyed creme brulée. We were stuffed!
After we'd eaten and paid the bill, Keith went back to the car while Sophie and I had another look around the town. We wanted to come back so I said we'd make plans to return over the next few days. We saw lots of art galleries and quirky little shops selling local produce where Sophie bought a couple of bottles of Normandy cider.
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| Huh? It's the 13th of January! |
Weirdly, there were still Christmas decorations everywhere! There were dressed Christmas trees, twinkly lights and the Father Christmas (above) outside a restaurant! When do the French take them down? Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, but it was still surreal to see them so much in evidence in the middle of January!
The buildings in Honfleur were gorgeous, and some very old.
Caught short!
We walked back to the car determined to visit again soon and paid for the parking ticket. We programmed the address of the Airbnb into Trish, who really indulged her fetish for narrow roads and took us out of Honfleur onto tiny little lanes, which wound through the stunning countryside of fields, woods and the occasional half-timbered house.
Sophie had used the toilets at the car park but after two halves of Leffe, she needed to go again. Unfortunately, we weren't on the autoroute, so there were no aires... Soon, she was so uncomfortable that I was forced to pull over in the entrance to a field. Opposite, was the autoroute and a steel barrier in front of a ditch. Beyond that was a hedge and then the motorway where cars and lorries were thundering past. She said she had to go and pulled down her leggings before balancing on top of the barrier, using it as a kind of loo seat. I held her as I was afraid she'd fall back into the ditch and she had a wee! Every time a car sped past I thought it was a car on our tiny road, but thankfully we were all alone! Afterwards, Keith and I nearly wet ourselves laughing so much! I'm sure it will go down in history as one of the funniest moments ever!
Our home-from-home.
It took us about an hour to get to our Airbnb near the village of Creully-sur-Seulles, about 12km from the town of Bayeux. We eventually did re-join the autoroute and encountered busy traffic in Caen, but by 4pm we had arrived at the house, a converted barn situated on a quiet crossroads. Our host, Anne-Charlotte, had a fire burning for us and showed us around. It was a beautiful house, made from honey-coloured stone and had a downstairs kitchen/dining area and living room, three bedrooms on two floors and two bathrooms.
Anne-Charlotte and her partner lived behind our building, in a huge manor house:
The fire was roaring away and it was lovely and cosy! We unpacked everything and Sophie and I drove to the nearby Carrefour in Creully-sur-Seulles, where we bought wine for the evening, salad, ham, water and bread.
Back at the house, we relaxed by the fire and Sophie and I played Scrabble with a glass of Cotes du Rhone red, a Sablet. Keith watched a new drama on Disney+ and after we'd played Scrabble, Sophie and I played cards and my daughter absolutely thrashed me! We enjoyed pate on little toasts, delicious washed down with the red wine!
After playing cards, Sophie and I found a riveting documentary to watch called Betrayal: The Perfect Husband, about a woman who thought she had the perfect marriage only to find her teacher husband had been having numerous affairs and had been caught with one of his students, ending up with his arrest. It was mind-boggling!
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