Monday 31 May 1999. So here we are heading back towards Calais, where a stop at a hypermarket is "in store" for us. The drinks were to prove cheaper than even the duty free - ridiculous really... But I suppose the French must be taxed in other ways. Anyway all the coaches suddenly got fuller!
This is a toll booth on the main road. At Calais Phil informed us that it was busy as the Channel Tunnel was on strike. Then he announced that the bad news was that so were the French port workers...
Our passage was booked for 4:30pm and we had arrived early expecting to be allowed to take the next available ferry. We had only 45 minutes to wait though so we were quite relieved when we later heard that anyone who had arrived without a booking was having to wait up to seven hours for a crossing. We boarded the ship and headed for the restaurant straight away to beat the rush. After quite surprising me all weekend by eating more or less anything that was put in front of her, Miss Franny joined me for a steak and kidney pie and calmly piled up all the pieces of kidney at the side of her plate... A good job we hadn't been expected to partake of frogs' legs or snails...
We sailed from a dull Calais and arrived back to a sunny Dover. As we docked, we went down in search of our coach and I walked past it as they had renumbered each coach. Jimmy shook his head at me and said, "You'd have thought after three days, you'd know what it looked like!" The coach trundled off the ferry and we found ourselves back at the coach interchange where we had to say goodbye to many of our companions.
There was a long ride back up to Blackpool and it was to be 2:00am on Tuesday when we got another chance to compare Blackpool Tower to its older French sibling. As we boarded the coach after a stop on the motorway around 11:30pm I leaned over to cheekily ask 86-year-old Edna if she was behaving herself. Her face lit up in a grin; "Oh no!" she assured me! Well folks, thanks for sharing our holiday - I hope some of the other people on it catch a sight of these pages and once again a big thank you to Leger who made it all possible!
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