… Continued…
No later than a couple of minutes go by and I ride off the ferry and onto main road. There to my right I notice people having their picnic lunch and ample amount of tables under the trees. I was looking for just the space like it to have my lunch too and this was just a perfect timing, as the clock tower somewhere in the distance had struck 13;30.
Coffee on, I take out the saved provisions that’s we had purchased in Brittany a fed days previously. This was a couple of hard boiled eggs, some onion crisps, a handful of olives, topped and tailed radishes and cheeses onion sandwich on sourdough bred. Excellent and quiet, it was, Rain has stayed south of me now. I had nothing to worry about.
Lunch done, I pack up and get underway along side of the river heading north along the river bank. Lovely scenery, with chalk cliffs to my left.
My next planned stop was Intermarche fuel station, Where I filled up for the remainder of my journey all the way home. I had a distance of 138 miles to go the the Chunell and another ~100 miles to cover in the UK.
Having filled up, I reviewed the route and timing. By the time I had qued for fuel, I’ve lost best part of 10+ minutes, and the lady in the payment kiosk had shut the blind, chucked the “Ferme” sign up against the window), locked the door and presumably called it a day. Now I hate the preauthorisation payments at the fuel pumps on my HSBC Global Money card. In this instance that i us exactly whatI had to put up with, a €150 preauthorisation, for a €31 worth of fuel. I am still waiting for this “pending” payment to get cleared. Now I do not store money in that account for the forthcoming trips like some people do. I load it up with what I feel will be plenty for the trip and go. In this instance, I thought that €600 would suffice for this trip. However if I had filled up at the robotic fuel statoin twice today, I wouldn’t have had enough credit on the card to preauthorise the payment. Why can’t this be processed a bit more quicker? I don’t like using my alternative credit card, not least as you get shite exchange rate and the dreaded “non sterling fee” on top. Argh….
I decided that I was risking missing my check-in and essentially my crossing too with only 7 minutes to spare before the official check-in time was up at 17:20.
I started a new MRA route from A—>B via the motorways while avoiding Tolls. I was only a very short distance away from the A28 heading north to Abbeville, where I would come off it and ride the D1001 along side of the A16 Peage section all the way to Boulogne-sur-Mere.
I keep checking my surrounding for weather. It was bucketing properly just north of Saint-Valero-sur-Somme
It was bone dry where I was though. It was quite a strange feeling actually riding along the wast open farmland, one minute you’d be blasted with a westerly cool wind pushed by the rain, and the next you’d be blasted from the east/south east with much warmer wind.
I had pressed on since leaving the fuel station, MRA informing me well in advance of the “High Risk Area”, so I was prepared to be on my best behaviour
and hopefully lack of
whilst chipping away at the remains time and my ETA to the terminal was now on the cards for 16:50, half and hour before checking would be closing. I get held up in the traffic at the junction for A16 near Boulogne-sur-Mere. I’ve lost 9 minutes in that gridlock of trucks, horse boxes, you name it and I swear it was there. Not easy to filter, and Frenchies wouldn’t budge as they normally do the right, leaving you space to pass, reasonably safely. I get onto the A16 and open up the taps, a little
.
I soon make up 4 minutes as I arrived at the check-in robot at exactly 16:55. I once again do get offered an earlier crossing.
Passport checks done, I am straight away headed for the queuing barriers.
Here I meet a couple of blokes from t’Derbyshire. One is in his late 50s on a Yamaha Tracer 700 I think and the other I’d say in his early to mid 30’s, riding a RE Continental GT. A nod at them and them back at me. That was a mistake I come to regret.
The elder bloke just out the blue coms up with this story and starts to tell me about his Peage booth experience he had and how a Motorhome had reversed into him, because he had stopped behind said MOHO and the bloke decided to reverse out the lane and try another booth, as this lane apparently wasn’t spitting out the ticket at him. The MOHO (according to him) “
had pushed him back some 10m, whilst he was blasting his horn, where eventually the driver had realised something was wrong and ended up being perched him self on this blokes front wheel, with the MOHO’ rear wheels being completely of the ground!” The young one doesn’t say a word, just smiles (allot) must be wind
or he does knife that the bloke is making the story up, whilst I think to myself “
Great story pall to tell your grand kids’ laugh it off, then make my excuses that I need to check my route home, send an email, change clocks from KM to MPH etc and basically ignore them for the remainder of the crossing.
I did actually do many of those things, including checking the weather and the big blob of yellow weather hanging between Folkestone and Dover. There is also allot of weather forming on the south side of the M25, so I make a decision to go over the Dartford crossing and over the top bit of M25. There is hardly any difference for me in distance whichever way I go. I think it is less than 5 miles.
Whilst waiting to be loaded, this had rocked up. Some value is in there.
We soon get loaded, once cagers have been let on. Departure is on time. I am happy to stretch my legs after hooning for two and a half hours along French countryside.
I break out my second (posher) sandwich made of cheese, onion and tomato. I finish it off with an apple, that I have been carting about ever since I left home five days earlier.
From a distance (I did not want them to smell the onion in my sarnie) I observe this Swiss fellow chatting with these two t’Derbyshire bound fellows whilst I tuck into my sarnie. I think he too bails out on them. As he’s walking by and I stuff my face with my sarnie, I greet him in my rather veeeery rusty German, he responds back in German “wie geht es Ihnen? with a smile. I respond “Gut” but make him aware that I can understand german better than I can speak it. After all I haven’t spoken it in great anger in over 22 years. We engage in conversation, about our travels. He’s from Southern (Italian) poart of Switzerland, having traveled from there to his place in Tuscany, then back up via Austria Germany, Luxembourg,etc. to the chunell. He was on his way to Tottenham (north London) where hi RUssian girlfriend does live, as he had some good news for her about becoming a Swiss citizen. He’s riding a 2016 R1200 RS with nearly 100k KM on the clock. He said he wanted GS, but found it too tall for him. I have warned him about leaving his bike unattended in London and that he must secure it, lock it etc. He replied “I know, it was already stolen last year” and that he found it the very same day. He did go for a walk around the area, and there is was covered up only 5 minutes away from where it was token from.
We carry on chatting, then before we know it, the train does come to a halt.We have reached our destination. Astride the bikes, we are underway, breathing in the fumes left behind by the cars before us. Lovely.
We got spat out onto absolutely soaking wet M20, with clear sky ahead and a huge black cloud behind us and to the left. It makes for a challenging ride, with setting sun striaght in my eyes, with considerable amount of spray being kicked up by the traffic in front. It must’ve just stopped raining, it was that wet. I soon set cruise control to 75 mph, with Swiss fellow following me behind. The other two had made arrangements to stay the night in Ashford, before heading home the following morning. I peel off onto A229 (then swiss fella carrying on on M20) then M2, which helped me to avoid getting soaked by the cloud hanging over the M20/M25 junction up ahead. I never see the swiss fellow again.
I filter throughout traffic at Dartford crossing, and soon make good progress, My ETA when leaving the terminal, was 19:37, I end up arriving home at 19:05.
I greet my wife and handover her the now not so fresh Choquettes that I had ferried for over 480 miles all the way from Saint-Malo. She doesn’t hang around and refused me to take a picture of her, as she knew it end up on here, and she wasn’t in her best dress up.
Then Olivia had to do her bit of inspection.
I had covered just under 545 miles in total to get home. With a constant threat of getting soaked, I was more focused on getting away from it, rather than paying attention on exploring. Still it was pleasant and adventurous enough to maker me feel content and seeing visiting previously unseen parts of France.
Thank you to all of you who have given me ideas over the years from your own ride reports, as well as mentions in person.
Thank you to
@Arsey for inviting me over, showing me around some places I haven’t been before, a surprise overnight trip to La Rochelle and for putting me up at his gaff. It was a good giggle, even if I could have made it much easier on myself, by choosing a ferry crossing instead. But as it was mentioned somewhere, I have been saving my £20 (£40 exchanged for Le Shuttle voucher) Tesco vouchers that I was planing to use to travel to Austria with my wife this coming bank Holiday weekend to visit my school mate, she, her partner and they dog Luna, have moved from Dublin to Vienna and had invited us to come and visit.
Unfortunately, wifey was out of work from late May (days after we came back from flooded Cochem) until early December last year and having started her new job, she has six month probation to follow through with, that is hopefully happening with a positive outcome in early June. So she did not want to take the risk and rightly so.
Anyway, the
vouchers were due to expire at the end of this month and I also had a £30 compensation voucher from Le Shuttle for delaying our crossing (Austrian trip) last year by I think two and a half hours. It was Wapping that given me the idea to claim, so I did as did he for his delayed crossing just a little while before. So there you have it, my crossing had cost me only £48 and I got to see the parts of France I would otherwise never had seen.
I have arrived home on fumes, having covered in total just over 1812 miles.
That’s it folks.
Till next time.
Ev
saves me the hassle of letting the tossers know where I am in time. 
️ 
