Mr Google advised that it was a very long way home. We were in the car by 6 am because we supposedly had at least 9 hours of actual driving to do and needed to cover 870km just to get to Calais, so with the need to make stops we back-calculated that 12 hours would be our minimum journey time. The reality proved somewhat different, but fundamentally we spent all day travelling.
Early Morning Autoroutes
Getting out of Grenoble at 6am on a Sunday morning was very easy and there was pretty much nothing on the road. I’d planned not to make stops for caches during the day as timings looked tight. I didn’t want geocaching to be the reason for any failure. As a result we proceeded directly through Rhône and Metropolis de Lyon without stopping for a cache, and we found ourselves all the way up at the Saint Ambreuil services near Chalon-sur-Saône at 8am, having already covered 225 of the 870km. That sounded like time for breakfast. We gave ourselves a decent break, filled the car up with fuel, and had something to eat and drink.
Kas took over the driving here and drove a massively long but very quick stint which got us all the way to Sommesous in another 2 ½ hours. It was only 11:30 am and we’d already done nearly ⅔ of the distance.
None of us fancied a proper meal, so we found a cache and grabbed some thoroughly unhealthy sweet snacks in the garage. We ate these whilst sitting outside, and then we got back into the car for another stint. We were very early, but we chose to go to Calais as soon as we could. There was always the option of getting an earlier train, or so we thought.
We were 350km away from the tunnel still. This should be around 3 hours, we thought. Even with another impromptu toilet stop, we made it to the terminal at 3 pm. That was three full hours less than Google suggested.
Tunnelling
The day went downhill at a rapid rate after this. We weren’t getting an earlier train. Why not? Because the terminal was so busy that they wouldn’t even let you drive up to the check-in gate unless you were within two hours of your scheduled departure time. So we were sent off site, around the houses a bit, and onto a massive holding area where we were segregated out in approximately one-hour lots.
We sat there for 90 minutes before being allowed through, and then spent another hour getting checked in and passing through the two passport controls. At least we were on the train I’d booked (or so we thought, again).
The terminal building was heaving, as ever. We queued up to grab some pizzas for dinner and then killed a further 20 minutes not buying anything in the duty-free shop. Then we went to sit in the car. 20 minutes later we thought we might be able to blag our way into the holding pen. We were early, so it was a risk, but we trundled round for a look. We failed. They sent us into a separate lane for our allotted train. And that’s where we stayed for another 90 minutes.
The trains were all running late. I think they fill them up to the gunwales rather than sending them off on time. On Sunday nights in summer the trains fill up quickly with flexiplus tickets, which means everyone else gets bounced back. Anyway, whatever the reason, we got a train about an hour later than originally booked.
The Last Leg
All of this put us back into the UK somewhat after 8 pm. We realised that we weren’t going to be getting home in time for the Co-Op still to be open. Also, I’d been in the driver’s seat since we left Sommesous, so it was time for a driver change. We stopped at the first lot of services out of the tunnel. I missed the lane as we entered the motorway so we ended up taking a circuitous route to get in. We grabbed a few snacks and drinks to eat at home and then set off again.
The motorways home were busy, like they always are. We eventually made it home at around 10:30 pm. We’d driven 1,080km (or 670 miles) over the course of the day. I thought it took a long time to get home from Aberdeen when I’d done it three weeks previously. The journey took 18 hours and we’d been out of bed for 19. It was indeed a very long way home. After a quick snack, Kas and me went straight to bed because we’d both got work in the morning.