Au revoir, Europe!

Well, we made it to the airport safely! Now all we need to do is make it home.

You can see some photos of today on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645709737341/

After getting mum to the train station well before 8, we headed to the Port of Dover, where we drove onto our ferry to Calais. This particular route is one of the busiest large ferry routes in the world - there are many, many crossings each day. The 90-minute crossing was fairly uneventful, although I did capture a couple of wicked photos of the white cliffs as we left:

The White Cliffs of Dover

See you later, England!:

See you later, England!

There was a complete absence of border control of Calais - you literally just drive off the ferry straight onto the motorway. We decided to go along the road nearer the coast, rather than just using the motorway. Our planned route took us past some spectacular scenery and over the city of Boulogne-sur-Mer. We wound up in Abbeville, where we had a brief look around:

Abbeville

After we found out the nearby Chateau was shut, we soldiered on towards Paris. By complete accident we went past Chateau de Chantilly around sunset, which was just magnificent:

Chantilly

After another hour or so, driving through some dense forests and sparse farmland, we made it to Charles de Gaulle Airport - the Renault lease car drop-off point, to be precise. It’s some distance to CDG, transport to which is provided free of charge with a transfer van.

I’ll upload a couple more blogs detailing our whole airport-airline experience until Brisbane. Au revoir until then!

The white cliffs... more of a dark grey

Our last day of travelling in Britain today, where we drove south all the way to the coast and Dover. Given that it was our last day and all, we decided to go straight to the White Cliffs of Dover, rather than going to our hotel first.

Dover on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157647343129007/

After abandoning mum because she didn’t want to walk the length of the trail, we headed off on our merry way. The weather was decent, on the walk over, and I was really impressed, not by the cliffs themselves, but by the ruggedness of the coastline. It’s hard to describe, it just “had that feel about it”, with just the right amount of flowering bushes mixed in with barbed-wire and wood fences and green grass:

Rugged White Cliffs

Of course there are the white cliffs, which are pretty spectacular, although you can’t actually go down to sea level any more - there was a landslide several years ago that they still haven’t deemed safe to traverse. I’m having flashbacks to Cinque Terre here:

The White Cliffs

The sunshine lasted until we reached the lighthouse, when we realised it was going to rain. We had a tour of said lighthouse, which was actually quite interesting. All the old machinery was still there, and we got to turn the old handle and watch one of the original mechanisms rotate the light. The lighthouse has long since shut down after the dangerous reefs shifted to the west by several miles:

The lighthouse of the White Cliffs

We power-walked the way back, not wanting to get too wet. As it turned out it didn’t rain too heavily, but the white cliffs had turned a fabulously mediocre grey in colour. Booo-ring!

Back to our hotel, where we walked around to a local pub and had another traditional British pub meal - our very last! Tomorrow we’ll throw mum out at the train station in Dover, where she’ll embark on the rest of her trip. We’ll get the ferry across the Channel and cruise on down to Paris. Until tomorrow!