France Trip - Day 2

We were woken up by the DFDS staff at 6.10am, so had to get up and check in. We then waited at the other side until 9am. We walked Oscar while we waited.

Oscar stayed in the van for the 4 hour crossing, we headed straight for the café and a full English breakfast. The ferry departed at 9.30.

We went on deck for a last look at England, the weather was a bit gloomy to start. We could see the Seven Sisters white cliffs, and Beachy Head.

We had a snooze on the recliner chairs, then went back out on deck as we approached Dieppe. It was much sunnier by now. We briefly saw some dolphins or porpoises as we sailed into the harbour.

We arrived at 2.30pm and disembarked pretty quickly. We headed to a retail park on the outskirts of town and did some shopping in an Auchan supermarket. Scott also got an eSIM from Free Mobile for his phone, which gave 350GB of data for 30 euros, a pretty good deal.

We hadn't had any fixed plans for our onward route, other than planning to head in the direction of La Rochelle and the Atlantic coast. However France was experiencing a heatwave at the moment, and the temperature there was expected to be over 40 degrees. We therefore decided to stay on the Channel coast for a while, so booked for 3 nights in a campsite a few miles along the coast at Quiberville-sur-Mer - Domaine Seasonova Saâne et Mer. It worked out about £25.50 per night including electricity.

They allowed us to choose our own pitch, and after setting up we went for a short stroll.

Since we'd had such a big breakfast we only had baguette with French cheese for dinner. Later we watched England play Croatia in the group stage of the World Cup - they won 4-2.

France Trip - Day 1

We left the house at about 8.20am in the campervan, and drove south. We stopped at lunchtime at Charnock Richard services on the M6. Oscar had a short walk and we had a sandwich that we'd brought with us.

We carried on and later stopped at Asda in High Wycombe where we bought a few groceries and filled up with diesel. Oscar picked up some bits of black plastic that were lying in the car park, and later vomited them up in the campervan.

We arrived at Newhaven ferry terminal at 6,30 and parked in the DFDS car park, planning to stay there overnight. A security guard came and spoke to us, and asked that we move the van into the check-in queue for the ferry after the last ferry of the day left, which would be about 10.30pm.

We made dinner, spinach and ricotta pasta with chilli sauce. We later moved the van as requested, and got to bed about 11pm.