I set my alarm for 3am to give me chance to have a cup of tea and not be rushing around too much. I think I'm so used to early mornings with my commute, that it's really not too much of a chore. Margaret's dad always got up before 6am (the result of years of early starts when he worked on farms) and was always ready for bed at 9pm. It didn't make him healthy, wealthy or wise, but you do get into a routine that's hard to break. Even when I'm on holiday, I find myself awake at 6am.
We got the car packed and everywhere tidied up for a prompt departure and Sam took first turn at the wheel. I think he was a bit sad at the holiday ending and it is also a bit depressing starting that early. Still, traffic was light and we were making good time - so good that Sam got flashed by a speed camera (here's hoping that he won't get a ticket).
I swapped with him at the first petrol stop after about 100 miles and Sam had a snooze while I drove. It was obvious that the sat-nav was taking us back a different route and Lucy said it often did. It had found three different routes back from Nat and Tibor's. I stuck with it as it was still showing a respectable arrival time in Calais, but I would have taken a different autoroute (the one we came down on in fact). I got more and more concerned as we got closer and closer to Paris until, in the end, we could see the Eifel Tower and the Sacre Cour. Those south-east suburbs of Paris are bloody depressing, thank heavens I don't live there. How can the centre of Paris be so beautiful and the suburbs so grim?
Eventually, we hit the Boulevard Periphique for about 10 miles and took the A1 for Lille past Charles de Gaulle airport and Gonesse, where we stayed years ago when Tom and Sam were quite small. The idea was that we'd get the train into Paris, but there was a French rail strike that week, so we visited Versailles instead. That's definitely not the route I would have chosen - all the way up the Autoroute de Sol to Paris then A1 to Lille and Calais. We changed driver at 310 miles (quite a stint, but easy driving) and Sam finished off the last leg into Calais, where we were able to get an earlier ferry.
His sat-nav was definitely having a laugh - when we got off the ferry in Dover and I set off for the M2 to London (a route I've done lots of times), the sat-nav wanted me to turn around and go via Canterbury! I can't say too much because we bought him the sat-nav for his birthday. We were back in London just after 4pm (12 hours door-to-door, or 13 if you count the clock change). I was able to get the 4.28 back to Peterborough from Finsbury Park and was home about 6pm. It was definitely worth setting off early, we didn't hit any traffic to talk about and it might even be worth going overnight another year.
Nice to see Margaret, Gravel and Holly again and I was back in time to see the last bit of light before a nice supper and a gin and tonic. I bought two litre-bottles of Bombay Sapphire gin on the ferry (£28 for the two) and it really does make a superior G&T. So much so that I had to have another to make sure.
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