Monday 30th June
Left quite early to travel to Dieppe. Good roads and only one minor problem with the sat nav. On arrival at Dieppe we decided to have lunch first and went to a Buffalo Grill in the commercial area. Have always enjoyed their version of French fast food and had been looking forward to sampling at least one during our stay in France. The choice of supermarkets for last minute shopping was nowhere near as good as in Calais or Dunkirk but adequate enough. Filled up with fuel which is about 20% cheaper than in the UK and went into Dieppe town which was surprisingly pretty ( much prettier than any of the other channel ports we have visited). We parked in the port area and walked through the town and along the sea front. There are some nice historical buildings but we only managed to look around a church and take a few photos. We went round to the ferry terminal at around 10am to park up and try to get some sleep before the ferry docked and in any case we had to book in by 5.30am so it was easier to be on the spot.
Tuesday 1st July
The ferry left at 7am and we headed straight for the cafeteria for a full “English” breakfast. Although it looked good the mushrooms were cooked with garlic butter (not sure it really worked for breakfast) and the toast was soggy. It was a smooth crossing although a bit slow and unfortunately the wifi was not working so Ken had nothing to occupy him have taken his laptop on board rather than his Kindle! Arrived in Newhaven and because it was the only ferry operating from there we had a very swift disembarkation and passage through customs and immigration. We might well consider using this route again but next time we will use the M25 / M40 to and from Newhaven rather than the option we did take which was to travel via Southampton and Salisbury and up the Fosse Way which took us much longer than we had anticipated.
We have enjoyed our travels in Spain , Portugal and France try but think we should should somewhere different next year , possibly the Romantic route in Germany or the Italian Dolomites. Watch this space!!!
