Swiss Roadie Trip Day 13 - Fontainebleau to London

---

It’s Saturday – parkrun day and today we’re running in the grounds of Fontainebleau castle. To be more precise; 2 laps of an ornamental lake at the entrance to the château.

My fitness has declined due to injury so I’m not looking forward to it. But I meet a lovely lady called Christine from Kingston and we pootle round together. It takes a very slow 47 minutes but we chat the whole way so the time flies by. We speed up towards the end when our respective families come and encourage us to run more and talk less.

Then it’s time to drive the 225 miles to Calais. It’s hot and first we have to circumnavigate Paris. Today’s soundtrack is Hadestown – appropriate for a Parisian motorway on a Saturday morning.

We reach the Tunnel and depart France at 3.50 pm, arriving in the UK at 3.25 pm. My brain doesn’t deal well with such concepts. We arrived before we left and not even in a DeLorean.

The drive to London is tedious with the final 20 miles taking 2 hours. There are 2 reasons for this: (1) it’s London and (2) the old man knows better and rejects the satnav’s suggested route (twice). Not even musical theatre can lighten the mood.

Then, having dropped the van at uni in the midst of the Summer Ball, there’s only the matter of a taxi to daughter no 2’s flat, a bus to where we left the car and 100 mile drive to Bournemouth.

We reach our penultimate destination – the Golden Oryza Chinese takeaway at 10.20 pm. It’s been a long trip and I’m all travelled out. (Until next time!)

---