"Please don't judge us on the facilities," said the amiable man at the Dover check-in booth. And I won't.
A lifelong obsession with arriving in good time for travel had delivered me to the port a ridiculous two-and-a-half hours before the time of my reserved ferry. Check-in was offering me a place on a much earlier but otherwise freight-only crossing and I was only too pleased to accept.
I had chosen to make the big move back to France, as an advance party with cat and a carload of belongings, by My Ferry Link, which has risen from the ashes of Seafrance. Having used all means of crossing the Dover Strait, I have a marginal preference for ferries if travelling by car.
The Shuttle is quicker but as functional as sailing on the truckers' special, and a lot more expensive. P&O has some great new superferries, and I have travelled with the company dozens of times, but the My Ferry Link price of £39 was unbeatable and no supplementary charge was demanded for going early.
So I bade farewell again to England, with few regrets, and joined the United Nations collection of lorrydrivers sharing a small seating area with a television that flickered into life only intermittently. The restaurant was more like a small works canteen but served an adequate fry-up, there was a very basic bar and that was about that.
But it meant I had more time to make Beaune for the customary overnight stop despite the vaguely menacing snow showers for long stretches of the 630 kilometres from Calais.
Dinner in Burgundy is usually a treat on this staggered journey from France's extreme north to extreme south. The 1,1850km can be done in a day, and I even managed it once despite having to drop someone off in the Parisian suburbs, but it's a lot nicer to pause.
Leaving the men on hotel reception with appropriate commiserations on the rugby, I opted for simplicity at the Piqu'Boef restaurant just along the road. My bœuf bourguignon was delicious, with a thick, rich sauce, and I am sure it really was beef despite the horse-carrying vehicles I had seen on the autoroute. They even tried to undercharge me, omitting to add the price of the wine to the bill, and I was foolish enough to point this out.
More snow awaited next morning and persisted until Lyon. I was grateful to reach the Mediterranean by the afternoon, but the daytime temperature of about 7 degrees Celsius, a welcome improvement on -5 in Burgundy, was replaced by evening chill in a house that had been unheated and empty for months.
Glad to be back in France. My last week in the UK was a strangely mixed cultural affair, from joining Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowsa and Matthew Goode at the premiere of Stoker, a dark, gripping psychological thriller or well-shot hokum according to taste, to charging up the M1 to Leeds for Fairport Convention - great concert, described here - and then back again for an exhilarating Carmen at the Royal Albert Hall.
I will miss those occasional nights in the West End and I will miss being able to watch Sunderland a few times, disappointing as the experience usually turns out to be. I will not miss the rip-offs - £1.85 to use the cash dispenser at Baldock services, ferocious parking regulations and charges, being asked to pay extra for bread in some restaurants.
For all the wealth that is still fairly evident, Britain can seem grey and downtrodden. The centre of Ealing continues to deteriorate, a function of recession and competition from Westfield. In my last week, another corner shop near where I live closed down, the barber had already gone down to a three-day week and other shopkeepers are agreed times were tough.
Is France any better? Maybe not. It is frustrating not to be able to buy pretty much anything you need on Sundays. The country has hardly avoided the ravages of economic crisis and the sense of misgovernment is at least as powerful.
But I know where I'd sooner be. If only the house would thaw out.
Recent Comments