Sliding into Calais

There's something nice about arriving places on boats, and so we rolled into Calais (parked alongside a gorgeous pristine old Jag XK100 - now that is arriving in style), and headed off down the Autoroute, noting the difference between bumpy busy free motorways in the UK, and smooth virtually empty pay to use motorways in France.

The regions slipped by and we got into Burgundy in decent time, branching off the main road at Beaune to head towards the Morvan national park where we've rented a house for the next ten days (complete with wi-fi broadband - hence this blip and the backblip for yesterday - and perhaps more importantly a pool table...). En route into the green rolling hills I did something I've never done before - I stopped driving for a period due to weather conditions. Snow, rain, fog, whatever, I've never really felt the need to pull over and re-assess the situation. But today the heavens truly descended. I knew there was a car in front, just ten yards in front, but there were times I simply couldn't see that. And so I pulled over, stuck the hazards on, and sat out 5 minutes until it cleared almost as quickly as it hit.

And I'm glad we did. There appeared to be some sort of motorbike rally on in the area, and after re-starting we came across the aftermath of two falls (one where it seemed the motorcyclist had slid into the front of a car which was now virtually left-side-front-wheel-less). Helplessly we carried on while others tended to those hurt.

On a happier note we're perched on a hill, the national park providing the backdrop, and ten days of guaranteed relaxation ahead (13 days really given we've got a 2 night stopover in Kent on the way back).

The proper travelogue starts tomorrow.