St Honore to Calais via Paris and the Eiffel Tower!

Breathalysed on the final day

Mandy:  Sooooo ... a last and long goodbye.

In theory all Screwballers were headed for the 5.30pm ferry, Calais and home.  As you will probably have realised, theory went out of the wind up window along with sensibility and decorum from the start.

We grabbed the last of the last photos, said tearful goodbyes (ok that`s drippy here, not Jo!!) and stopped for a coffee with the Pirates at the campsite café before our own departure. Rhubarb gave up her remaining headlamp washer blade for James' Jeep and we boomed away with the 'Bear Necessities' for the last full blast time.

Decant/refill just to be sure to be sure

The weather was accordingly gloomy and we tried to decide whether to bother "doing  Paris" for the Eiffel pic if it was going to be another "What bridge?" moment!  We pondered pylons ... would anyone really notice?  How about a souvenir Tower glued to the roof?  We left to fate the decision for the outskirts along with time to catch the ferry.  I couldn`t help thinking of Garmin (Emily on sat nav) as Gollum and fell into irritating "Ooh my precious" imitations as she intimated we only had 50 miles to go where the raod signs insisted 211 km.  Now my maths is notoriously atrocious, but I felt sure the conversion was putting about 180 miles between the Ark and her 5.30pm meeting with destiny.  

Overtaken by the clowns in a Trabant

No matter as it would transpire, the sun made enough of a feeble bid by the outskirts of Paris for us to throw caution to the wind and head for the centre.  Now we had adopted a slightly keen emphasis on driving in San Sebastian as in "What red light"?  This we employed to the full, along with - if you will build a stonking great big tourist attracting tower that insists on hiding behind every single office highrise you will have to accept random halting anywhere anytime. 

The shot of the trip.  A trEiffle short of genius :)

We had been advised by a Pirate (if that isn`t an oxymoron I don`t know what is) to head for the Trocadero to ensure a picture of the whole edifice. By absolute fluke we found ourselves, after the inevitable "excuse moi ... ou et le Eiffel ... "  Ahhhh, right here above you query, right underneath it.  

Jo insisted we mounted the pavement for the best shot.  Rock climbing was never in the Volvo spec to my knowledge and certainly not for one with sills of body seal and floorpans of carpet.  Oh, hadn`t I mentioned that?  No?  I hadn`t told Jo either.  Suffice to say after securing brilliant shots of us and her and IT, we left with a wincing rust sprinkling clunk over each wheel.....well, we were virtually home!

The last bit, despite storming along like an Ark possessed, proved a road too far!  We arrived too late at 6pm hoping to catch the next one at 6.30pm only to get through customs before making such enquiry.  Never assume ferries run on the hour.  8pm and a long two hours outside in a queue was our fate.

As if the Eiffel Tower weren't enough!

Well, you gotta do what you gotta do.  We made the best, cracked open the wine, uneartherd the last of the emergency ration munchies and had  a bonnet party in the setting sun, with other curious motorists.  Sadly we saw no more of the Screwballers who had either achieved, or as we would later find out stayed in France.

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We plumped for a B and B in Dover, the prospect of returning to the original campsite to change cars in the dark too miserable a notion.  However if you had witnessed our attempt to locate it a mere 4.2 km from the ferry you would be hard pushed to believe we had just covered 2,213 miles on foreign soil!