From France . . .

. . . but quite obviously not France.

We have been making the crossing from Dover to Calais more or less every year for . . . well many, many years, with and now without children. But do you know I still get a thrill as the ferry pulls out and we leave the white cliffs behind. The children loved to watch it, as there were a few on deck excitedly watching it today. It just seems so much more real in a way than air travel, I don't know why. Maybe it's just nostalgia for those times when it really was the only foreign travel we did.

Anyway, here we are . . . in Calais. It takes us northerners so long to get down to Dover, that it really isn't worth trying to get any further. And we like Calais. We know it, know where to stay, where to eat etc. So we're off for a drink and our first French meal and then it's a long drive south in the morning.