Days 297-299 Saturday 22nd – Monday 24th November 2008
Left Lyon on a cloudy morning and arrived at Camping Hautoreille in Bannes, just outside Langres, in under three hours. Toll 28.80€. We are staying here for one night before going on to Calais. We had seen snow on the roadsides and in the fields on the way up, but no snow in Bannes……. until thirty minutes after we arrived – George walked up to the loo block and came back all white – it was snowing! We had hoped to walk round the hilltop town of Langres in the afternoon but it was really cold so decided to have a drive through instead. It seems to be a lovely place with a central square and medieval buildings.
Topped up with diesel - 1.09€. It was snowing hard by now so we gave up and went back to the caravan to warm up.
Not many people on this ACSI site, and because of the weather we didn’t see much of it. Couldn’t get the ACSI discount at this time of year so we paid a high 18.90€ for the night – but at least the electricity supply was good at 10 amps. Electric fire on full then!
The countryside was completely white by now and we were wondering (worrying) about getting snowed in. It snowed on and off for most of the evening and the site looked a picture – see photos.
Up early for a quick getaway, not snowing now, but very cold - minus 1degree - and over an inch of snow blanketing everything. For some reason the little site roadways were clear (residual heat in the tarmac ?) but we still had to clear away some snow and scrape the windscreen (well, George did!) and eventually left at about 8.30am. Great relief as we got to the motorway after 20 minutes with no problems for the longer journey to Calais, 480k, should be there by 3.00pm.
Deserted motorway – our usual Sunday traffic. Weather not too bad for the first hour, then the sky cleared and we had bright sun for about two hours and the temperature rose to 4 degrees but when we got north of Dijon it all went pear-shaped. We could see the clouds in the distance and it slowly got darker and colder, eventually down to 0 degrees and then we hit the snow storm. It snowed on and off for the next two hours and visibility was down to a scary 50m at times and as we passed each service area we debated whether to stop or not, but kept plodding along. We left the UK at the end of January in horrendous weather and it seems we are destined to end our adventure in the same way. When we were about 50k from Calais the temperature went up a bit and it eventually turned into rain. Tolls – 55€ total.
Very relieved to get to Camping Bouscarel, just east of Calais, with no problems. Still very cold here but no snow. The site has spacious pitches marked by low hedges, but no outside lights at all, not even outside the wash block - not very helpful when it’s dark at 4.30pm! If we hadn’t had a good torch with us we would have been in real trouble. Also we only had 4amps of electricity so we couldn’t have the fire on the highest setting. Thought we’d switch to gas for heat, but hadn’t used it since last February and we couldn’t get the fire to light – typical!
We paid 37.02€ for the two nights, very expensive for what we got, but the site is very convenient for an early ferry or Tunnel Train. We are here for two nights before travelling through the tunnel on Tuesday.
The next day we went to Cite Europe to do some Christmas shopping and stock up on booze before our trip back through the tunnel.
