16th of September 2011

It's a while now since I got back to the UK but just a brief mention of the journey home.  IT WAS LONG!!  I did over 13 hours driving that day although that did involve a brief diversion to visit a friend on the way home.

Stuck in a contraflow - cyclist overtook me four times

The day started well and I had the car parked and breakfast eaten to plan.  Setting off I aimed for Grenoble only to find 5 sets of roadworks before I even got that far.  Seems that the french had some fresh budget come in and wanted to do all the work at the same time.  Once past Grenoble though I was soon on the autoroute and making up some ground.

I wasn't relishing the thought of such a long time on the autoroute all the way.  It was the quickest route for sure but it was pretty dull so after a few hours I turned off and onto the A roads and B roads.  For those who haven't driven through the french countryside you're missing out.  It's often a reasonably progressive way to travel and as well as the twisty roads they have lots of Roman roads which make overtaking a doddle.  I trekked cross country and ended up driving very close to Puligny Montrachet and north along the Borgogne tourist trial.  If I'd have known I could have saved driving a dozen bottle of wines around Italy for 6 weeks and just bought it on the way home.  Oh well.  I filled up the car again with fuel and jumped back on the motorway to make the final stretch to Calais.

Typical french country road - smooth and quick 

N road pleasure 

Spotted on the same motorway coming back from the place where I'd driven four different ones of these

Nearing Calais 

Channel Tunnel at last!

It was a very long day but I didn't feel too bad when I got in to London.  Two points stick in my memory though and they both happened twice.  The first was after about 200m seeing a deer cross the road.  After all the years of driving cars and passing signs warning for deer I'd actually seen one, 15 miles up a valley in the alps.  Like buses though... within a couple of hours I'd seen another.  Strange.   One reason I like driving in Germany on the autobahns is because of the birds of prey you can see hunting every few miles.  I'd seen a couple of birds flying at the side of the autoroute but about half way home I passed a point where from a distance I could see a bird stood on a fence post.  On passing by you could see it was a magnificent beast and seemed to stand 50cm or so tall.  I'm not one that has much of an interest in nature or ornothology but the bird was a very impressive site.