E42: Back to Calais 19/20 May

Early on Tuesday morning we drove across the border in to France.  Very soon we were chomping into a fresh baguette and coffee for breakfast……..lovely!

As we were in the Southern part of the Alsace wine region we could not resist calling in to our favourite wine co-operative in Ribeauville, one hour later and we were on our way with even more wine in the back of the van.  A full afternoon driving and we found ourselves in Luxembourg where we stopped for the night in the Aire in Dudelange (what a great name!)….

Next morning we awoke early so took advantage of this and got under way towards Calais.  We filled up Wolfy with 95 litres of Diesel at the bargain price of £0.80p per litre at a filling station which was already busy at 06:30 in the morning!

Finally late afternoon we arrived in Calais and went straight to Carrefour at City Europe, adjacent to the channel tunnel terminal in Coquelles, parked up in the carpark/aire and walked over to Carrefour where we managed to ‘top up’ our wine stocks with a few more bottles of red wine (it would be rude not to!)

Then we settled in for the night ready for the morning trip on the train back to Blighty and then back home to Scotland.

At this point this blog comes to an end.  We have spent 5 weeks touring Italy and Germany and covered 2500 miles.  The blog documents most of the journey.  We have enjoyed the road trip and believe we have been very lucky with the weather, in all that time we only really had a couple of days of bad weather (today being one of them), most of the time we have had blue skies and temperatures in the low to mid 20’s centigrade with a high of 30c!

A few culinary delights that we will ‘take home’ with us include Gnocci with Gorgonzola (search for Nigel Slaters recipe online), Mùnster cheese with Bavarian honey (!), Weiswurst with sweet mustard and fresh pretzels (the Germans do bake the BEST pretzels!) and of course Black Forest gateau, which we will try to emulate (finally get to use the Kenwood K Mix we bought last Christmas!).

Where next? we haven’t worked that one out yet, but it WILL be another adventure!

Tara….