London to Paris

Lionel Willis. That's the name of our van. We didn't make it up it he was wearing a name tag when we bought him. Well he had a sticker inside the wardrobe that said so.





We headed out of London on Friday afternoon. Well we first headed straight through the center of London in our giant camper which was probably about the most nerve racking thing I had ever done. Little did I know this would be over thrown a few days later when we drove through Paris.

We made our way South East to Dover, which is where we were to catch the Ferry to Calais, via Seasalter and Canterbury. Well can't say much about Seasalter except that I will never go there again. We spent our first night in our van there, a suburb in the middle of nowhere. It poured! Oh, and yes our van leaks. Canterbury on the other hand is beautiful and green. The city was surrounded by a wall in Roman times half of which still remains. This is due to the fact it was rebuilt in stone in the 1370s. It was a fantastic site. I felt like dressing up in tights and running along the top of the wall whilst flailing a bow and arrow. I chose to restrain myself.

We caught a SeaFrance ferry across to Calais on Saturday afternoon which was quite an interesting experience. The ferry is huge. Lots of shops, bars, restaurants and even a poker machine hall. I chose to spend the two hours and forty minutes drinking wine and having Chris teach me one of his favorite computer games in which the aim is to push a man down some stairs and see how much damage you can cause. We found pushing at the base of the neck accumulates the most points.

We arrived in Calais about five o'clock and decided that we would find some where to stay the night and attempt the drive to Paris in the morning. At this point we didn't realised we had changed time zones so for the next twenty four hours we were a little confused. We found a campsite in a very small town not far from Marquis. It had nothing but cows and holes in the ground which the locals referred to as toilets (not that I could understand cos they were speaking French). Enough said.





We left for Paris the next morning, well what we thought was morning but was actually afternoon as we still hadn't realised the time difference. The drive was fun and the weather was on our side and with one stop in Amiens before we new it we were entering Paris.



Gargoyles in Amiens


Driving through Paris was insane! Our GPS navigation lags, so it informs us of our next turn once we have already passed the road. Good work RAC, fantastic! Well we made it in one piece anyway, oh except I forgot to mention that thanks to Chris's handy work inputting addresses into the “fantastic” GPS we booked ourselves into the wrong campsite. Lets not rub that in. We slept the night and made it to the correct camp the next morning. We are about 10 minutes from the center of Paris so everything is really accessible. Today we went to the Eiffel Tower, as one must do when in Gay Paris. I had no intention to climb up I purely wanted to stare at it from beneath with some ice cream. There were enough stairs in London I don't feel the need to go climbing any for pleasure.





At this moment it is about 7.30pm, still bright as day and too hot for clothes. The people next door have just invited us for a drink so I will go now and join in the festivities. I will put more clothes on first.