And so it was time to return to old Blighty. Simple plan, head to Citée Europe, looks around, have lunch, shop at Carrefour, then head to the Le Shuttle terminal. Simple, what could go wrong.

Now I must admit a bad night sleep did not leave me feeling that great, however we left the hotel around 10 am and went to the Ionity charger we used on first arrival, at the Holiday Inn near Citée Europe. Within 15 minutes we were then on our way making the wrong turn with the result we were heading to the check in for Le Shuttle. Fortunately they cater these sort of mistakes and once more we we off to go shopping.

Now in our minds we had a lot of time, but with a 15:20 train we needed to be at the terminal, for around 14:20, which meant hitting Carrefour by 13:00. It did not leaver as much time as we expected before lunching at Flunch, so the Citée Europe trip the previous day had paid off.

Food done, shop done, all looked rosy as we set off back to the Le Shuttle terminal until just a couple of minutes away we get a warning there are delays. Understatement. In theory just 25 minutes from Calais to Folkstone, but 1.5 hours in the other direction, We arrived about 15 minutes early and should have hung around the services area, however proceeded onwards straight away and waited in various queues for which we could see little or no reason. We were one of the last cars on to a train leaving the expected half hour late, however if we’d followed instructions and spent 15 minutes at the rest area, then we would have been another half hour.

Still back in England it was just a matter of heading up the M20, on to the M25 and hoping the Darford Tunnel, plus the M11 and A1 junctions were not too bad, so why did I follow the signs for Heathrow. Habit I suppose. Problem is that took me the other way round the M25. Distance wise it is not that different, but time wise there are far more potential hold ups. Turns out our only bad one was due to a serious crash closing two of four lanes down near Guildford (serious enough it resulted in 2 fire engines and an ambulance). Still we were back at mine by 6, so possibly not that much later than if we’d gone my preferred way round the M25.

Car unloaded and pizza ordered. Some photos and a possible recap to follow.