Tuesday 17 March - Home

Weather: A frost overnight and a fair morning.

Just before 8 o’clock this morning, we pulled off the Autoroute onto the approach road to the Eurotunnel Terminal, fully expecting there to be queues and delays. The reality was surprisingly different.

Driving straight up to a check-in machine we were offered a place on the 0819 crossing. It was only as we pulled away, towards French border control, that I realised quite how soon 0819 was.

The lack of time was no problem. We were waved through French border control without our passports being checked. The next control is customs which is usually the longest hold-up as they get a number of vehicles in a queue before doing swab tests on all of them, but today all of the officials were indoors so we drove straight through.  Next up was UK border control, where they did take and scan our passports, but didn’t ask the usual suite of questions (or, indeed, any questions). Within minutes we were heading off to the queue for the Shuttle. Incredibly, just twelve minutes after leaving the Autoroute we were on the train. An hour before we were even due to leave France, we were in the UK.

Our departure from France was just a few hours ahead of the new restrictions on movement and border closure, announced at 8pm yesterday and effective from noon today. They put France into a similar ‘lock down’ position as Spain, except that in France anybody leaving home is required to have in their possession a written declaration as to which of the limited permissible reasons to be outside applies to their movement. Neither the new rules nor the closure of the border would have prevented us from leaving even if we hadn’t brought our return to the UK forward by a day and a half, as they are still allowing EU citizens* to transit through the country to return home, but to leave this morning gave greater ease and certainty. Moreover, who knows what may happen to Tunnel and ferry crossings over the next few days?

Usually by the time we arrive home from a trip we already have plans for the next one. Unsurprisingly, that’s not the case this time…

(*Until the end of this year we still qualify for rights as EU citizens even though we no longer have that standing.)