Sunday 19 May - Wissant

**Where's Bertie?** He's in the Aire at Wissant, where he has been many times before (most recently in September 2024), this time at a cost of €11 per night.

**Weather:** Mainly dry but overcast and quite cool.

Our Chunnel crossing was originally booked for a week earlier, until we realised that we had a lot to do in too short a time, some of which was being scuppered by Erica being poorly (no windscreen wipers is rather an impediment even in dry weather at this time of year, what with salty roads). So I pushed the crossing back, thinking we would get away at least a day in advance. As it came to pass, it was 0830 on the morning of our crossing that we pointed Bertie's nose south.

In the usual way we stopped in for lunch with friends in Crawley (and what an excellent lunch it was too!), before continuing on to Folkestone*. After tea in the car park at the last services on the M20, onwards we went to check in at the Chunnel at just gone 1800 (for our booked 2017 crossing) and as is usually the case, we were offered an earlier option. Thus we were on a moving train at just gone 1845.

As we then did the short hop down to Wissant, I check out how we staged this journey the last time we did it, two years ago. I may just as well cut and past the blog posts for the next couple of days as, provided all goes to plan, we are going to do exactly the same again.

A long and empty train making it look like we are going to drive through to France.

(*Bertie failed his MoT on two points. Many Bertie-esque vehicles don't have a driver's door, with just the habitation door as their means of entry and exit. Bertie does have a driver's door, but since someone tried to steal him, that door hasn't been openable from the outside - an excellent security measure and no trouble to us as we never used it anyway. Unfortunately, even though a motorhome doesn't have to have a door there, if it does have such a door it has to open from both sides. Thus, the failure. Bertie also has a long-standing intermittent fault on one of his rear side lights, and this year our luck ran out and it wasn't working for his initial MoT. He did subsequently pass, but with that light being unreliable (we will redouble our efforts to get it fixed, but thus far the fault has been elusive) we try to drive in daylight as much as possible. This journey was finished with a red bicycle light taking the place of that side light.)