Driving home day 4 – Last leg in France – up to Calais.

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Set off early, well for us anyway, after I had had my quick walk up into town to get a baguette and my breakfast croissant. Just far enough for a leg-stretch, needed as a long drive today from the Loire right up to Calais (240 miles).
Kept off the motorways though a couple of times Clarissa Tomtom got a bit above herself and tried to insist. We went through Chateaudun, skirted Chartres and then drove along the Seine but the view of it is mainly obscured by buildings and trees. Horror of horrors, our route took us round Rouen, a city we had vowed to boycott after our towbar / immobiliser incident of 2009. Even worse, as we got close we found our way ahead blocked by an accident and had to take a big detour but all was well and we managed to get clear of Rouen without incident.
Up through the Somme region and round Abbeville and then had a bit of an argument with Clarissa Tomtom who thought she could read maps better than me. She chose some ridiculously little roads just to save 100 metres and would have done far better to have asked me ! Bob was not amused and I think he blamed me when we drove right through the middle of the little, restricted streets of Guines, just before we got to Calais.
Once parked up on our €7 a night spot on the Aire at Calais we tried to take a stroll along the seafront but were soon beaten into submission by the wind and retired to the Tandy where I read my book and fell asleep while Bob played patience on this laptop.
Dinner was our normal last French night meal of ham and eggs plus frites from the friterie on the seafront.
Today was midsummer’s day, the official start of summer. Did not feel like it at all. We had to wear jackets when we went out. I had been hoping to take some sunshine back to England with us tomorrow but there is not enough here to share. My records for the trip show that we have had 19 sunny days out of 29 which is not bad but it also means that we have had 10 non-sunny days. Our decision to spend longer on the south coast which did have the lovely sunshine was definitely a good one.

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