The final drive home

17-19 October 2009

After so much hot sunny weather, it was a bit of a shock to look through the curtains in the morning and see that it was snowing hard! The first fall of the winter in this area.

As we lost altitude the snow soon stopped and for our journey home we followed a route which for the most part was different from the one we use in the winter. There were two reasons for this, firstly we wanted to pass through a different part of France and secondly we wanted to avoid the French motorway tolls.

We went the way we usually do to Besançon , from there northwards past Nancy and Metz, then north west close to the Belgian border through the Ardennes which we thought was a very attractive area with rolling countryside and finally along a series of motorways past Lille to Dunkirk. The journey was accomplished in two days of relatively easy driving along quiet major roads (it was the weekend), dual carriageways and motorways all of which were toll free.

We spent the nights at a very pleasant Aire next to the canal in Taon-les-Vosges just north of Epinal and at a campsite in Bergues, an attractive small walled town just outside Dunkirk.

The channel crossing and drive home were uneventful.

The lasting memories of this trip will be the outstanding weather we had, the unusual geological features we saw and walked through and the many attractive towns and villages we visited. We travelled about 2,500 miles.

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Part of trip: Provence

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