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France 2019

Here we go again...

We are off to France and once there, Corsica




Yes, Corsica is the plan and to make it more interesting, we booked the ferry from Nice for this coming Friday afternoon using aferry.com who interestingly are based in Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire. I spent many weeks living there on a caravan site whilst working at the JET project at Culham. I stopped doing that the morning after "the great hurricane" of 1987 after my awning was wrecked. Fortunately I had been working all night during the storm. Had I been inside my little touring caravan I think I would have been reduced to a nervous wreck.

The drive from home to Le Shuttle is 240 miles and it takes about five hours. Sunday morning is a good time to start and we arrived early and jumped onto a train an hour before the booked time. There was time for a swift coffee "on the back". Note the nicely varnished drop-down table not yet deployed.

On the train there are only two heights, lower or higher than 1.8m so we were in the higher lane and pulled up behind a Swiss couple in a Santana. Whilst it has some considerable similarity to a Defender, I believe these are significantly different and whilst the Santana allegedly offers some comfort, flexible power and a little space at the front, the Defender, erm doesn't.




We were off the train and into our much frequented site just east of Boulogne within 30mins. We've been here many times and its familiarity is comforting. This is especially so as there are three long-term summer residents - a lady from the Netherlands in here caravan, a Belgian man in his tent and "Gypsy Lady", so named as she lives in a traditional wooden caravan.  "C'est agrĆ©able de te revoir"

It's a great place to overnight and we were lucky as the weather had cleared-up and it was summer!
(280 miles from home.)



Day two has been a 215 mile, non-motorway drive towards Dijon. The weather is warm and dry and it has been enjoyable except for a problem with the newly fitted overdrive. This has been jumping out of non-engagement and it got worse through the day. Eventually I left it engaged which is OK except for very slightly difficult hill starts (due to higher gearing).

The newly discovered "French Passion" (ahem), is going to be great, if this night's stop is anything to go by. This is a network of free overnight stops, provided by farmers and growers. We are at a farm in a small hamlet, next to a barn on a lovely patch of grass. 


That's me sorting the overdrive linkage which had unwound a little. I think that will fix it.
Look what's in the barn!! A 1966 series 2 (109" I imagine). Guess what the Farmer and I have been talking about. šŸ˜€












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Comments

Phil said…
Oh wow! Have a great trip!! It won't be raining over there! Px
13 June 2019 at 12:44
Tim said…
Thanks Phil. Last minute prep then we'll be off!
15 June 2019 at 18:56
Charlie said…
Lovely stuff and great you have already made a Landy friend ��
17 June 2019 at 18:39
Nick G4FAL said…
New restoration project?
19 June 2019 at 22:37
Tim said…
He's not for parting. Maybe he's heard that people are starting to look at the little Series vehicles as candidates for electric propulsion conversions. Coming sooner than one might expect apparently.
20 June 2019 at 16:43
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