We’d taken the ferry as a change from the tunnel, as well as the route to Portsmouth giving us that chance to drop-in to SIV but it is slow! Le Shuttle is so quick to load and unload and although the Commodore Clipper is a very small ferry, we sat in line for ages, both before and during the check in and border process. Maybe the M1/25/20 drive isn’t such a bad option after all.
That route has brought us here to Normandy and it’s full of things to do. We are going to spend a day at Honfleur which is across the Seine from Le Havre. One is a big port and the other a beautiful coastal town. We’ll concentrate on the beautiful bit.
First though we need a place to stay as it’s already 7pm when we disembark (no queues or further checks here are needed to enter the EU). Just up the coast are a couple of places on Park4night. We drove past one in order to have a look. It’s a €10 fee to go through a security gate to a house but we think you need to ring a French number and we wonder about the preimposed ‘spend cap’ we have on the pay monthly sim in the phone and decide to look at the other place.
That’s in a village up the road and is a small parking area next to the church, at the entrance to the cemetery. When we arrive, there are six camper van / motor homes already occupying the six reserved spots and although there are a few other parking spaces, we are not sure.
The sign says parking must be in allocated spaces (it’s very succinct in French but I can’t recall it). The ‘six’ are all Dutch / German, save for one and I muster my best Franglais and ask if he thinks we are ok where we have parked. He says that as we are out of the turning circle for the bus, then we are. This doesn’t help for some reason and we resolve to return to the €10 make-a-call gate, which is only a few minutes away.
As we pull-up to the gate and start to fumble with the phone, it opens and the kind lady hostess bekons us across the apron and welcomes us. Not only that, we don’t need to park alongside the other four small motor homes and we can drive onto the grass and park further away. It must be a Land Rover thing.
So we do, The dog stops barking, we have a beer in the sun and all is well.
The next morning we pay the fee and drive 20mins north to Etretat. Dawn has done the research and knows what to expect but even so, the high chalk cliffs with their sea arches and the huge steep pebble beach are quite a surprise.
We walk along, out towards the school kids picking in the rock-pools for snails (?) and I find a lead sinker off someone’s beach fishing tackle. How long it has been there I can’t tell but it hasn’t degraded.
It’s a popular place, even in this sudden cool weather with heavy rain on the way. We walk up the cliff and back down again, manage a coffee and then walk back to the Pay-by-phone car park (the only one that allows >2m).
We know it’s going to rain. A low pressure system is heading straight for us. We’ve almost forgotten what rain a like, it’s been so dry in England.
So we head for Honfleur and a big campsite a couple of miles out, with lots of hot water and facilities. We’ve invested in ACSI cards for this year and the site will thus give us a low season discount.
The motorway pèage doesn’t seem to know if we are class 1 or 2. One of these will be more costly than the other but which one is selected is a lottery at each barrier. We pay extra on this motorway section to go across Pont Normandie. There’s little alternative but it’s a great bridge anyway. The fact that they are adding cables to those that have been there since it was built 30 years ago is slightly surprising but presumably the result of recent bridge collapses (was it Genoa?).
It rains all afternoon and into the early evening, before we finally venture out for a little leg stretch and then some very appropriate warming soup.
It hasn’t been a long drive today!
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