30th August 2023

We left home early at 5:30 am to go to the Channel Tunnel. We got to the terminal at 8:10, which was well before our scheduled 9:23 Tunnel departure. Surprisingly, they offered us an earlier crossing, but we decided to stick with our original reservation. Looking back, we realized our timing calculations were a little off, and we could have taken the earlier crossing. While we were at the terminal, we explored the duty-free shop not buying anything., but planning for our return trip to make the most of the “world beating” duty-free allowances introduced by Johnson.

While we were at the terminal, I had a great conversation with a woman who was demonstrating the features of the Ford Mustang electric car. It caught my interest because, three years ago, I had been thinking about getting a Mustang EV. However, I ended up choosing a Polestar 2 because it could be delivered faster. The woman knew about the Polestar, and we had a nice chat about electric cars.

Getting on the train was a bit different from normal. Loading the cars seemed to have some issues, so we had to wait for a while. Eventually, we got on the train, and interestingly, we were the last to get on and off. We departed about 15 minutes later than scheduled.

We took our usual toll-free route to the pretty village of Le Bec Hellouin. We arrived at the Camping Saint Nicolas campsite at 3:44 pm. Before we got there, we made a quick stop at a small supermarket in the nearby village of Grand Bourgtheroulde to get food for the first few days of our stay. Since Brexit, there are strict rules about what food can be taken into France.

The weather was a bit chilly, but we decided to eat outside and enjoy the setting moon. To start our evening, we opened a bottle of Vouvray from the supermarket, as is our tradition for fizzy wine on the first night. With our meal, we had a glass of Abbey beer, which is a rather strong 10% beer. Dinner was pan-fried pork fillets with a side dish that was like ratatouille, all cooked in one pan.

Strangely, there were very few bats out tonight, maybe because it was cold. The weather forecast for the next few days didn’t look great.

My eSim, with 30GB of data from Bouygues Telecom, worked well. I just had to be careful not to accidentally use data on my physical SIM card, which I really wanted to avoid. Meanwhile, Rosemary still has her old EE contract, which allows her to use her phone in Europe. It came in handy when my reception wasn’t great. I started calling Bouygues Telecom “Boogie Tell” as a nickname from that point on.