Les Hommes des Camionnettes Blanches

It almost sounds like a secret society!  It certainly is more pleasantly sounding, perhaps without the slightly thuggish connotations of White Van Man!

Anyway, Bill and I were les hommes de la camionette blanche last week.  The Iveco Daily long wheel base van was rented from Europcar in Slough using Rhino Car Hire - I had originally booked it some time ago, but cancelling that booking and re-booking at the last minute saved about £90, even allowing for the loss of deposit on the original one.  Next time, I will risk doing a last minute booking, as long as it is not a busy period.

We left early (05:45 ish) on the Saturday morning, heading for Folkestone.  Despite a detour to drop my son off on the verges of the Medway towns, we made it to the Eurotunnel terminal in good time.  Bill paid for what was one of the worst bacon, sausage and egg baps I've ever had, and the coffee was not good either; at least we consoled ourselves that things could only get better: we were going to France, after all!

At Calais, we took our normal route of Rouen, Le Mans, Tours, Bordeaux - the A16/A28/A10 route.  This is more expensive toll-wise, but avoids the uncertainty of Paris and the Boulevard Peripherique.  The only problem we encountered was at Rouen.  About 50m before the turning for the A29 west, there was a diversion sign, saying that the main bridge over the Seine in Rouen where the A28 finishes was closed, and it was "obligatoire" for us to go A29, A151.  Unfortunately 50m is not really enough time to digest this information and work out the options etc, so we kept going.  Sure enough, just before the river, we were shepherded off the motorway.  At the traffic lights, there was a v big queue turning right, so we headed left; unsure as to whether we needed to head towards the airport or not, with Bill trying to make sense of it with the road atlas, I forked to the right.  It turned out this was the best route for us - we were heading south (always a good thing as that is the general direction we wanted to go!), and were driving along the east bank of the Seine.  This took us to the A13, a couple of junctions before we would have joined it if the main bridge had been open.  We probably were delayed in total by about 15 minutes, which I suppose is not too bad, all things considered.

For refueling both us and the van, we were unfortunate in terms of timing - the van needed diesel before we needed lunch. Diesel just after Rouen, and we hung on until Le Mans for lunch.  Along the A28/A10 route, there are two tedious legs - Rouen to Le Mans and Poitiers to Bordeaux.  Anyway, at the end of the first drag, approaching 14h, we stopped at the service station at Le Mans.  After Bill's breakfast, it was my turn to buy lunch.  We didn't want to hang around, so, stupidly, we bought a Wendy's hamburger, forgetting that the last time we did the trip we did the same thing and regretted it!  Lunch was really no better than breakfast.

That over with, we continued, and ended up at the house just before 19:45 - a journey time of around 13 hours.  We decided to take only the bags out of the van, turn on the heating in the house, and head out to Duras and dinner at La Terrasse - we deserved it after the drive and bad breakfast and lunch.  Second issue of the day - La Terrasse in complete darkness.  No problem, we could always go to Don Camillo for a pizza..... Oh no, that was closed too!  We then had no choice but to go to the Hostelerie des Ducs, which was more expensive than the other two, but food was essential, as we had nothing in the house.  The meal was great, and was a good end to a long and tiring day.