Road trip

Interrupting my enjoyable accounts of meetings with family and friends in England, a trawl around out 3500 km plus round trip to England from the S of France.

We decided to drive because we thought of taking French wine to our family.  In the process we kept some Burgundy for ourselves from our favourite Jacob vineyards - crémant, Chambolle Musigny and some white Hautes Côtes de Beaune matured in Acacia barrels which is less easily available so we were lucky to find it!  Sadly, on our return through France we could not find a chance to revisit Echevronne but we'll be back, no doubt.

Perhaps the highlights of the route and the roads we travelled were or will be the Millau viaduct which will more or less welcome us back into the Languedoc when we return home down the A75 tomorrow, and the quiet journey from north of London up the A5 towards Staffordshire as we started our visit in December.  the Narrow Boat pub on the Grand Union Canal has been an enjoyable stopping place over the years.  We returned south on the A5 but sadly the pub was not yet open for coffee as we passed.

But the most surprising pleasure is the moment on the M25 near Rickmansworth when it passes neatly under the Chalfont Viaduct - as the Atlasobscura website relates "Those impressive Edwardians thoughtfully left enough room between the arches of this grand 1906 railway viaduct for an eight-lane motorway to pass through".  I can't help thinking the motorway designers had to back off a considerable distance to line up the M25 through those excellent brick arches.

Our almost daily journeys from near Burton to Wirksworth, between the houses of our sons, gave us time to refine our route - the picturesque but windy one via Ashbourne was rapidly replaced by the smoother but still enjoyable route via the A38 and A50, quicker and less demanding!

We have learnt to pace ourselves, shorter stages with hotel stops, but still on these short winter days the end of each day is a challenge as streams of headlights approach us in the gathering darkenss as we attempt to decipher the directions to the next hotel.  And even welcome sunshine in France today presented problems as we negotiated ring roads and roundabouts.  But we enjoyed the sights we could spare time to see - Chartres cathedral against the skyline, and a sliver of crescent moon as we drove towards Orléans.

The car ferry is a gentle respite on the route, and the Channel Tunnel is so quickly over in a car that you scarcely remember it before you are on the road again.  But on short winter days perhaps the tunnel is a better bet, leaving more daylight hours to drive safely in.  Changing sides of the road no longer presents too many challenges - I always feel that the signage and road markings are clues enought to which side of the Channel and of the road you are currently on.  And we saw no gilets jaunes at all on the way up,though several stood by their roadside fires and did not bother us as we passed Dieppe, Evreux and Dreux on the way down.