Saturday, 30 May 2015

The Grand Tour - Day 1

Today we have travelled 543 miles in the car plus the distance across the channel in 11h 45m.  We are pooped.



Apart from travelling past London when the FA cup final was on and about a thousand cars had football scarves flapping out of their windows ("I KILL YOU!"), the journey to Folkestone was fairly good.  

We got a train under the channel two hours earlier than the one we had booked and were first in the queue and first on the train. Apparently 8000 people were coming back from France today with only 2000 going in the other direction, so the terminal was really quiet.

On the second round-about on the French side, Frogge lost the ability to count.  "We need the second exit, so that's this one" he said, taking the first exit.  When challenged, he explained that as we were in France, he was counting backwards.  I love my husband.

Somewhere between Calais and Dunkerque the limiter stopped working on the Juke and a red warning light came on.  I pulled off the main road into a commercial estate in rush hour (the worst choice ever) and we checked the manual - it said that this was an engine malfunction light but that the vehicle would not require towing. Given that it's Sunday tomorrow and the car is working fine except the limiter and cruise control, we will get onto Nissan when we arrive in Memmingen tomorrow afternoon and hope that it can be fixed on Monday.

Driving down this eastern part of France we have passed lots of war graves - this is where the main trench warfare took place in WW1.  Had there been time I would have taken a photograph in the afternoon sun since these were very moving.  We also passed a glorious field of red poppies which seemed eminently fitting.

The (budget) hotel in Chalons-en-Champagne is far nicer than we were expecting and we arrived in time to catch the last of the sun for our picnic.  We've been running the cool-box in the car, so our g&t&lime was nicely cool but we failed to put our glasses anywhere accessible so had to share a plastic cup from the room.



Tuesday, 12 May 2015

The Grand Tour 2015 Pre-tour info

Map of route

Itinerary

  • May 30 cross the channel via Eurotunnel, stay overnight at Chalons-en-Champagne, France
  • May 31 drive to Germany and stay at Memmingen in South Bavaria for two nights
  • June 2 drive to Austria via Neuschwanstein Castle (from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) and stay overnight in Innsbruck
  • June 3 Drive through the Alps, arriving at an agriturismo outside Siena, Italy.  Stay in Tuscany for 5 nights
  • June 8 travel to the west coast and camp for seven nights at beata solitudo on the Amalfi coast
  • June 15 break camp and travel to the Ionian coast of Sicily for five nights in an apartment with views of Mount Etna
  • June 20 travel back to the mainland, stopping overnight at Bari (top of the heel)
  • June 21 drive along the Adriatic coast to Abruzzo where we are camping for five nights in an olive grove in the mountains of the Majella national park
  • June 26 break camp and drive to the opposite coast, staying one night in an apartment within Villa Federici in the Cinque Terre
  • June 27 & 28 stay in a small apartment in Riomaggiore (again the Cinque Terre) 
  • June 29 travel north to Moncenisio in the Alps - stay for two nights
  • July 1 drive east and stay overnight in the Valle d'Aosta next to Forte di Bard
  • July 2 start the journey home, with an overnight stay in Troyes, arriving home in the late afternoon of July 3