Stage One
SS16 (Strada Adriatica) Vasto> Ancona
Stage Two
E55 (Ancona Nord) > E45 (Pesaro)> E35 (Modena)
A50 (Milano Nord; Tangenziale Est/Tangenziale Nord)
A4 (Aosta – Brenner) E25 (Aosta Est)
Overnight: Express Hotel, Autoport, 33 Pollein
Stage Three
E25 > Mont-Blanc Tunnel > N205 (N1)> A40 (to Bourges en Bressait fork) > A39 (Dijon) > A31 > A5 (St.Quentin) > A26 (Reims) > A16 Calais (sortie 43) Overnight: Hotel Restaurant de la Plage, 693 Digue Gaston Berthe
Stage Four
Ferry Terminal > P&O (naturally!!) > Dover ferryport > A20 (Dartford Crossing) > M25 (London) > M1 (Luton) > M6 (Birmingham) > A6 (Lancaster )
Costs (in euros)
Italian autostrade: tolls-57.20; fuel-85.00
French motorways: tolls-91.45; fuel-66.00
British motorways: tolls-8.00; fuel-71.00 Mont-Blanc Tunnel: 47.40
P&O Ferry (Calais/Dover): 84.99
Accommodation: 60.72 (Aosta); 45.82 (Calais)
Total: 617.58 euros
Overall Impressions first (before the particular): It is not so easy doing a trans-European, Italy-France-UK, road trip without a co-driver and/or navigator, and more specifically without my wonderful wife, Olena. For example, when I had my thermos of hot black tea with soy milk, I ended up pouring it all over ‘mah troosers, which turned daurk as the ace of spades’ in the process, rather than into the small flask cup while trying to keep the car on the straight and narrow; Molto Pericoloso!
The contrasts are illuminating on these pathways of transit designed for density or volume, speed and consumption – autostrade: On this first stretch (A14), there are plenty of curves to negotiate at speed, speed, speed – every man his own Nuvolari! Each to one’s own in the survival of the fittest! The thrilling madness of endless conveyance!
Then there is La Grande Route de la France, l’autoroute blanc or ‘The White Motorway’ (N1) from The French Alps all the way to Paris. Large tracts of smooth tarmacadam largely bereft of freely rolling circumferential rubber. Mine, my Malaysian-provenance Hankook ‘ruote invernali’ (winter tyres) are brand, spanking new at 110euro each, purchased for the trip and a legal requirement in Italy at the same time.
Characteristic of the ‘sur la route’ French experience are the brown places/points of interest roadside info boards: everything from Benedictine-monk frequenting abbeys to the location in Normandy where V1 & V2 rockets were launched at London during the tail-end of WW2. Everything from striking medieval architecture, e.g. in Troyes, to one of the most impressive 16th century belfries in all France at Douai; a veritable po-pourri of cultural/historical/geographical places of interest serving up visitor what-might-have beens as driver eyes narrow in concentration and fatigue with only one aim in mind, get there, to your destination as fast as possible and in one piece!
While, moving prosaically, along motorways in the UK, there are armies of the yellow-helmeted brigade, human ants of road construction, scrabbling away round the clock in the increasingly desperate resolve to make these important arterial routes ‘Smart’ by removing the need to have a ‘hard shoulder.’ All that toil on one of the most questionable infrastructural projects there has surely ever been!
POETIC INTERLUDE I Hot tea in my flask Pour it! Pour it! To drink at the wheel of a car Is a task and a half To get this taste from a flask! Pour it! Don't Spillit! Pour it! Don't Spillit! Pour it before it cools Like people before fools Drink it down fast or quick Not in a while but in a tick With a long lingering smile. Look! There goes another mile!
Impressions: Stages 1 & 2 (Vasto – Ancona – Val d’Aosta)
Prior to heading for one of the windiest motorway driving sessions I can recall, I fill up at the pumps. The driver of a black SUV, female, accosts me on the thorny question of ‘nozzle brandishing’ in the doing of the unleaded needful. In short, she requires an attendant as she has no wish to splinter her costly manicure which she waves in my general direction, seemingly half-expecting me to do the job! I point out the stocky blue boiler-suited cove in the distance quaffing what would appear to be an espresso at an unnaturally slow tempo. She is in for a long wait!
Post-fuel operations, there is the sizing up of the drive ahead through Google Maps – Ancona – 263kms and 2,5hrs distant as the first port-of-call in this my fourth such road trip inside 4 years.
Initially, the aim this time round is to reach the Marche ferry port (to Croatia) and fishing port (whelks, mussels, oysters, squid & octopus) by around midday, so that I can stop in Ancona for business, before continuing with the journey. The barrier towards achieving this is the multiple and variable in completion repairs to almost every galeria (tunnel) and ponto (bridge) lining the deep bend curvature of the A14 northward. Parallels with Monza or Imola come to mind with the huge speeds reached by cars and vans as they hurtle past the yellow helmeted, orange boiler-suited road workers going about their autostrada route improvement business. Needless to say, these drivers pay absolutely no attention to the suggested speed limits of between 50-80kms p/hr. No doubt these particular ‘blue collars’ fear for their lives, especially at night when they have to continue their manual labour operations under floodlighting.
Despite the multi-vehicular multiples of all kinds of road and tunnel construction causing an obstruction, I make good 140kms p/hr progress. Up on lofty viaducts getting the ‘reinforcement treatment’ after the Genoa bridge collapse back in 2018, I am afforded good, albeit hi-speed fleeting views of the land use domino effect in these parts, lido-after-lido and sprawling seaside towns overlooking the aquamarine waters of the Adriatic all the way up to Ancona.
Finally, there the port stands on a promontory in the characteristic primary colour facades of its housing. Those four-floor layer cake dwellings with the wrapround balconies, more functional than aesthetic. And there they are, the Anconese, no doubt with their own regional quirks in dialect, cuisine, habit and political scene. But more than this, as intimated earlier, it is the arterial routes linking the port, CBD & centro citta with the main autoroutes that grab the attention, at least for the traveller, they are in a truly desperate state of potholed disrepair in many places. The arrangement of these roads is concentric with roundabouts (rotatorie) accompanied by a profusion of destination board signage. Luckily, there is the SAT-Nav to take the strain and Lisa (the female SAT-Nav voice)takes up the slack in her Home Counties inflection Italian where ‘via’ comes out as vya and ‘grazie’ comes out as grazy, even so we get there in the end.
At 5pm I bid my adieus, destination Val d’Aosta, announced to looks of incredulity that appear to morph into the question, ‘Is he crazy?’ on the faces of my erstwhile colleagues. Back in my car I immediately turn left instead of right (setting an unfortunate tone for the rest of the travelling day) as Lisa takes time to properly cailbrate herself in leading me back to the autostrada north for what will prove to be a longer than average drive to the first of two overnight stop offs at 24hr check-in Autoport. Though there is still time enough for a 15min leg stretch and torrone purchase at an Autogrill outlet en route. All the same, I quickly discover that in the dark it is hard to see the green destination and distance boards that remain stubbornly unilluminated – plus they are too bloody wee for proper extended night driving!
POETIC INTERLUDE 2 Yes, oh yes, this all reflects The jam we are in, Wounds self-inflicted, Where to begin? What must we bin? Where to go? How to get there? We are all in a spin. Our planet must be saved – Or will we all be caved? Those that survive Left like bees without a hive.
As the metronomic 4-lane morphing into 6-lane progress continues apace, plenty of evidence of a planet in trouble emerges by the sides of the motorway: a huge industrial plant at Piacenza, yellow sulphurous smoke belching out into the deceptively still night; those crucibles of modern slavery – enormous Amazon online delivery warehouses, abattoir-orial in scale and intention; an IT centre named The Comfort Zone, yet another anglicised term that has entered the culture (since absolutely everything collocates with culture these days) of the Italian language, a glimmering arcade of pale blue plate glass, stainless steel and titanium. Then, on the edge of Milan’s suburbs, there is the industrialization of processed durum wheat in the form of a giant Barilla pasta-making plant. While on the road itself, I pass alongside double-axle trailer after trailer of car transporters, split level, ready to ‘roast’ our environment from the exhausts of each car in search of an owner (but, of course, I am surely doing the same, I think to myself in the back-draft of hypocrisy such thoughts bring), careful or otherwise.
And still this industrial zone reflective of hectic, unchecked consumerism is revealed illuminated in the night, left and right of this arterial arrow shot through the heart of Italy with Gucci HQ in all its sparkling splendour, looking ghostly through the patchy fog in this part of the Tangenziale maze, having made good progress so far. Then there, on my right, looming over me is the ‘axe of popular culture personified’, a blue-and-white tower announces to the passing world on radials, Mediaset, sinister in its all-consuming outreach, plaything of the 84 year-old cavaliere Silvio Berlusconi in his own domain making yet another political comeback: and through the intermittent fog, an unwanted development, my car is one lozenge away from running on empty with both sides of this circuitous road seemingly bereft of filling stations. What to do? What to do? What to do? Time for a decision, and it had better be the right one!
Decision made: I see an illuminated Esso sign on the right side down below one of the many flyovers. So, I go on the scent of British Petroleum in Milano in the hope that I can figure out the right path to the pumps. Instead, I end up at a sizable bus station near a gaggle of taxis with their drivers. Pulling up I ask the nearest specimen of the breed, a surly cove, for the nearest filling station. Luckily, with the gauge now in the red, it is a mere 600m straight up the urban dual carriageway in front of me. So there I am pumping the ‘lifeblood of conveyance’ into Georgia (my Opel Corsa car) when I notice a presumed local manoeuvre his vehicle into position at the pump directly in front, and I think to myself, “how am I going to get back onto that Tangenziale and the route north with an intermittent unreliable signal coming from the SATnav, and no real idea about the sequence of turns that will lead me there?” So I ask the taciturn Milanese and his answer seems straightforward enough. As told, I perform an elaborate fundamentally illegal U-turn jockeying with those milanista motorists with eyes deadened by the daily urban jostling for pole position at the wheel. In amongst all this unfamiliarity and in poor visibility, I am unable to regain the route required to slide seamlessly into Val d’Aosta. My ears begin to pop. But the bright side is that I have a full tank of fuel and a reasonably full stomach filled with French beans, pomodori antiche, Spar generic sponge slices (individually wrapped), foccacia and Swiss/Northern Italian cheese, together with two types of fresh olives alla Adriatica. Nevertheless, here around the wealth creation hub of Italy I realize that I AM LOST!
POETIC INTERLUDE 3 No languor here on rolling tyres, Only angst, green gloop, A thick shroud dropped down onto this road That envelopes time and space In radials of rubber and metal Peering out, am I Eyes like darts At an impasse where the board Is a destination on the other side Out of reach, that seems always Out of reach.
With no clear idea of how to get back onto the correct Tangenziale, I begin to seek counsel with the locals, or whom I take to be locals. The first is an amateur football fan whom I ‘catch’ as he crosses the road to get to a floodlit pitch surrounded by a steepling perimeter fence where tens of supporters already lurk, klaxon horns at the ready – the enthusiasm of the Italian football fan is seemingly limitless! A protracted series of instructions and directions follow made in halting English (since my Italian is only for good or unemotive times only!), which he apologises for at the end. Though, of course, the apologetic one should be me! I move on down another urban carriageway. I confront a North African looking chap who seems nonplussed that a chap driving a silver car with Italian plates (FR – Frosinone) should have only a perfunctory knowledge of the language! His response is garbled. His smile is hard to read. I take another U-turn across a carriageway with cars looming up at me from different directions as desperation grows. Then, I contemplate reversing back down a motorway slip road that had destination boards reading Venezia/Trieste/Udine, but I am forced into taking this road by a fleet of cars coming up fast behind. Nightmarish! The fog thickens! The plot almost lost! It gets worse before it gets better with the time now after 11pm.
2.50eur paid at the toll barrier, I pull away and stop just beyond the restraining barrier and wave down the car following me through the toll. I am in luck; they are a young couple with a reasonable amount of English. They appear determined to assist in getting me back onto the right road, respective phones are consulted, Satnav scrutinised, a stream of instructions, warnings of destinations to avoid on directional signage, and then they are on their way at snail’s pace along this now devilish (to me) Tangenziale: and then I watch their car drift to an even slower pace in front of me as though noticing that I had once again taken the wrong slip road, this time to a sleepy-looking eastern suburb with a string of mini roundabouts to negotiate. 11.30pm and no nearer to getting on track. It is there at the city’s edge in the dark that I get out of the car, collect myself, take bearings, and engage Lisa to get me out of this hole of my own making. It is getting on for one hour spent attempting to break these concentric Lombardian circles in the forlorn attempt to get back on the straight-and-narrow. In the meantime, the fog has thickened. With the Satnav at last ‘fully engaged’, and after a great deal of fuss and bother, talking to seven different people and exploring the highways and byways of industrialised Milano, the right road is finally traced through a thickening pea-souper.
POETIC INTERLUDE 4 I felt angry in the night Mulling over my plight I was angry don't you know But I didn't want it to grow So I went away And did something else Instead.
Close to midnight, and the vehicle glaze on black tar is now a mere sprinkling of light as I make the final slip road access manoeuvre. A final payment of 15.25eur is made to negotiate the last segment of strade italiane, a 64km stretch in the early stages of the wee sma’ hours, knocking back the last of the lemon water, keeping back the last of the scran for a ‘brekkie’ in the shadow of the Alps. The fog begins to lift as the Alpine air assumes dominance. An assortment of orangey-yellow lights sprinkled in layers on inclines and across the tops of jutting craggy promontories in the shape of crucifixes, or in lighting up medieval torre announces the identity of the cradle between all those imposing Alpine peaks – at last Aosta East comes into view! A little later, on my knees with fatigue, I check into the expansive Autoport based locale that is to be my domicile for the next 7 hours, Express Hotel Aosta East. It is already the next day as I struggle into the lift with one heavy bag and a rucksack (complete with laptop), and press the button. The lift stays put! A few minutes later, a fellow hotel guest arrives, slips his key card into the slot under the floor indicators, and we are away with my head cast down in embarrassment. Ah, the slings and arrows of outrageous lift operation! Moments later and I am giving it the biggest of ‘Zeds’ buried deep in the covers of a bed spacious enough for four!
‘Free’ Expressions: Stage 3 (Val d’Aosta – Calais)
The same morning I settle over the quite substantial remains of my in-transit food for a 7am breakfast in my room. I settle over it all like a ravenous raven about to attack an undersized bird feeder – anything will do! Then a Whatsapp message from my wife informs me that the breakfast is included so I go downstairs to the extensive first floor eatery/breakfast room to have a brief breakfast in the pure yodel-filled foot of the mountains air. However, first there is the submission of the key card and third time lucky printing of a key passenger locator document required for smooth entrance to the newly detached citadel masquerading under the GB moniker. Though it was noted (as I inched ever closer to the Normandy coast) that there was now an outsize UK sticker to replace the ol’ GB one for those Brit vehicles deigning to roam through foreign climes. I can’t for the life of me comprehend the need for this modification of identity – but there ye go, it’s post-Brexit time and it has to be acknowledged!
At 8.20am, after I had eaten my fill of cornetti, yoghurt, baguettes with jam & cheese (not together but apart!) washed down with a coffee or two, I am back on the road again. This stage is earmarked as Aosta East > La Plage, Calais; a distance of 1,049kms and 9hrs 9mins away according to Google Maps – but hey, when were they ever right? Almost immediately I cannot resist the urge to pull into a lay-by and pull out the mobile camera to capture the precipitous snow-capped grandeur of the mountains all around me. Snap! – the torrents of crystal-clear glacier-dissolving water. Touch – image recorded, a soon-to-become memory recorded there and then for posterity. The car door is there awaiting the opening. After yesterday’s day of talk, question and ask, today is the day of silence – for the most part.
The kilometres begin to slip by in bright, late autumnal sunshine. The idyll of this lustrous place heightened by the sparkling sunbeams supplied by mother nature. High up above my head the Monte Bianco skyway cable cars in black-and-cream livery slide up and down the sheer slope of this incredible mountain. Barely credulous am I while imagining the panoramic views afforded those intrepid enough to brave the vertiginous heights, thinness of the air and reduction of oxygen at those high altitudes. And these are just cable car passengers! What it must be like for those incredible mountaineers who risk their lives for the adrenalin buzz! Unimaginable! But nevertheless, to those that reach the peak the rewards are great indeed.
POETIC INTERLUDE 5 …so many words, so many phrases to bring out and bind, to ask each one in kind......the one who is alone, life stripped down to the bone....looking ahead a night-stop bed....ahead there is only the zone to come, a border to cross....no rush, no fuss, there's only the road, the car on that road and the path ahead.....
“Andata…Ritorno?” Asks the tunnel toll taker at the Mont Blanc entrance. I go the low way, they (in the cable car) go the high way. I am prose. They are poetry. Then shaken out of this reverie, I realize that my provenance this trans-European time round is very much Italian. So, I make the required response, “Solo andata…” And Georgia and I are on our way into this marvel of modern 20th century engineering, all 18.5kms of it through the hollowed-out hallowed mountain at between 30 to 50kms p/hr, and at 6 car length distance from the one in front and behind due to periodical road and tunnel repairs. It makes for slow progress, very slow progress, enough for a little of the suffocation, hard to catch a breath or two feeling to kick in: all purely psychological, of course. Then, I am on the other side in another country, seamlessly, despite the presence of many paramilitary-type vehicles at the demarcation line between Italy and France parked at the official buildings that mark the blending of one nation-state into another. France – and I pay heed initially to two things: a substantial memorial of a WW2 Free French helmet with a large ‘Croix de guerre’ and multiple inscriptions on a large stone slab, including partigiani on the Italian side who fought Nazi paratroopers on these very mountain slopes. And, secondly, there is morning mist or fog thick enough to cause an extra beat or two of the heart in the winding drive alongside the pretty downslope rural hamlets characteristic of the region. All to catch the ‘source’ of La Route Du Blanc which covers the 885kms north to Paris. But not mine to complete. The ‘ghostliness’ of the in-transit atmosphere is provided by a long grey chimney stack pumping great plumes of smoke similar in hue to the thick blanket of fog stretching right across the valley between steepling peaks of snow-capped mountains. And it is as if this stack is a tap or siphon allowing the transference of all this meteorological vapour into strata higher up in the atmosphere until it all disappears, making the valley clear and pristine again. Dangerous reverie when you are at the wheel of a car with a largish country to cross ‘sur la route’ SE to NW. Though further on towards Annecy, it does begin to clear.
On drive-time radio there are frequent warnings about poor visibility on the roads. I pay heed and reduce ‘cruising speed’ from 140kms p/hr to 120kms p/hr till the heliotropic light bathes the beauty of the Saone-et-Loire in a warm glow of good-to-be-alive intensity. All around there are the green and gold francophone fields characteristic of the region, and I imagine them as historical strands of the follicles of Danton embedded forever as remnants of growth where the blood of revolution had been shed long ago. More prosaically, they morph into the valleys and forests, viaducts and escarpments of the Jura.
POETIC INTERLUDE 6 A single egret – white glow in seas of green – a field in the Jura, watches an olive stone cast out of a car window onto the tarmacadam, its provenance Conad, Vasto Citta, to bounce till crushed under the heavy tyres of a passing 'LT' HGV; that egret mute in its observation at the frenzied mobility of homo sap on its frenzied way to oblivion or to perdition where the hope is of many more tomorrows to come.....
A dial is turned on the car radio, ‘Musique’ is the station and immediately I enter the realm of absolute serenity at each roll of the radial and turn of the wheel. Steering my way through the interconnection of links northward through alternating brilliant sunshine and patchy fog.
Alongside, for company, are the ever-present articulated lorries – albeit much more spaced out and less populous than in Italy and the post-Brexit alto mondo of UK. (where they are in such short supply that even The Queen is being touted as a possible recruit due to her possession of an HGV-licence from the war.) And the ‘league table’ in terms of the presence on the roads of these trucks runs as follows:
1st – LT, 2nd – LV, 3rd – BG = Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria
On this particular stretch to Dijon, I notice a brand, spanking new state-of-the-art red-and-black Daf BY (Belarus), sleek and polished to a high shine with its walrus moustachioed driver appearing in the slipstream on my right. He cracks a broad smile as I accelerate past. Most unlike the usual taciturn, stoical demeanour of the HGV-LDD fighting to keep white line fever at bay.
At Dijon-Ouest motorway services, it is time for a leg stretch in the little forest adjacent to the BP station & snack-bar complete with woodland walk. On my return I notice a UK stickered trailblazer at this, my only real pit-stop across France as an outsize jet-black Range Rover pulls a shiny bullet-shaped silver retro caravan of 30s vintage, built in the States; the very epitome of mobile home luxury en route to stately pile delivery in Hampshire or Sussex. No doubt with the two Brits I observe debating over the correct nozzle to insert at the pumps alternating with the driving. One with a posh Home Counties accent dressed all in black, the other in thick cream-coloured cricket jersey and matching kagoule, speaking in a West Country twang – an odd couple to match the odd coupling of 4×4 with sleek caravan.
Twilight descends after a long day of zen-like driving cross-country, through for the most part unspoilt rolling hills and huge fields of beet, potato, wheat, rye. The massive cultivated lands of a country I have always loved and admired in so many ways, the language, the philosophers – innovators of thought & behaviour from Descartes to Sartre, Simone Weil to De Beauvoir – the history (e.g. the sans culottes), art (the Impressionists), the landscape. All ‘experienced’ through thought, sound and vistas in the six hours from Dijon to the Normandy Coast avec Musique Canale Plus, and the panoramas of the Jura with its high mountain valleys, spectacular viaducts as an early backdrop. The psyche is salved and reached via the senses, the visual being pre-eminent through the crisp dark blues, orange and crimson skies as I pass by an extensive rotor wind farm in mid-construction, all at various heights depending upon the progress of their completion. It is a strong indicator of the development of renewable energy sources in these parts. Around 20-25 in number on promontories, it is true that they are not aesthetically pleasing, these great white Siemens flagstaffs but they are necessary in my opinion. But it is the hardware and manpower as well as the process of erecting these masts that grab the attention. And the ones that are doing their work spinning round and around like the cycle of life in blasts of efficient silent energy are provided with their own soundtrack from the car stereo as I open my window. Strangely, these pieces of music seem most apt as sonic accompaniment – extracts from the Philip Glass opera, Akhnaten and the allegro molto vivace from Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony – a sublime confluence of sensual happenstance! A moment or moments to cherish and savour. Sure enough, as darkness falls there is the rain. The first squall of the trip, and the closer I get to Calais, the harder it falls. Yet, curiously, after all this driving, I feel more elated than fatigued whilst passing a clutch of those characteristic roadside information/places-of-interest boards – Reims, la paysage du champagne et la naissance du premier cru; Abbaie Benedictine Languedoc – oh, how they roll off the tongue, these inflections that are music to my ear! Troyes – lieu de beauté médiévale.
All are passed by and left far behind as I finally approach the banlieue of Calais at 8.45pm with one thing on my mind, ‘Ou se trouve Hotel de la Plage?’ Lisa the SAT-nav duly engaged – ‘non-spotty’ version – thus begins 30mins of frustration as I cover, back track, U-turn, turn and turn again within a district where practically every street is named after a famous artist; Place Doré, Rue Toulouse Lautrec, Rue Matisse et al, and later as I move closer to the centre (after a necessary re-calibration) and the floodlit stadium of the local football team going hard at the endurance training, there is Boulevard Martin Luther King and the De Gaulle Memorial ethereally lit up by a rotating blue, white and red light, patriotism writ (lit) large! All this I notice in passing, as Georgia under my guidance is sent on a series of ever-decreasing circles by the ‘madly spinning’ Lisa. Here I am caught in the middle in the fight for supremacy between ‘nav & machine!’ I reach a tall, strangely inland black-and-white lighthouse and think to myself, ‘enough is enough’, I begin my second round of ‘if in doubt ask a local’ – first, I hail down a pizza delivery van driver busy in his work circumnavigating a buzzing Calais in weekend reveller mode (despite the ever-present pandemic). He vaguely puts me in the right direction after a quick Google Map consultation, and I am on my way again dodging a few drunken Brits trying hard to negotiate some of the many detour bollards set down to create a distancing one-way system amongst pedestrians. However, on a night such as this, when so many are under the influence, you may as well launch a temperance movement in a distillers convention! Second opinion required, I seek affirmation by the ginger-haired male receptionist on duty at The Holiday Inn who is kind enough to go outside and actually point out the road that will lead to La Plage – – – – – – finalement!
Circumventing the nefarious one-way system in place at snail’s pace to get to my hotel – no thanks to a thoroughly confused Lisa – is still not easy due to the miniscule size of signage regarding accommodation and facilities available along this part of the seafront on the other side of the ferry port. The Hótel Restaurant De La Plage is a low-slung, recently renovated structure, and is crammed with crimson-faced merry-makers as I arrive. There is no parking out front, so I throw in another ‘ou se trouve’ or two at the smokers puffing contentedly outside. Minutes later, I turn into the rear of the 2-star hotel and am immediately confronted by row upon row of police riot squad vehicles, water cannon, paramilitary armoured cars, troop carriers, sleek-lined pursuit interceptors – enough hardware to launch a coup! Alongside there are two minders, riot police ‘heavies’ eyeing me suspiciously with a hint of menace, so a quick 3-point turn later I am out of there with yet another traveller’s tale up my sleeve! Of course, sights such as this just serve to emphasize just how much the Normandy Coast is again on the front line; this time as far as immigrant illegal entry to Europe and the UK is concerned.
I’m finally placing my ‘trusty steed’ Georgia in one of the bays overlooking the sister hostelry Hótel Appart du Golf adjacent to La Plage. The name is a bit of a misnomer since there is no golf course attached or anywhere nearby – though it is hard to tell in the darkness! I take in the topography around my temporary residence. It is a deceptively hospitable scene of boardwalks, littoral pathways, and wide concrete promenades overlooking the channel. The breeze as usual uplifts moods and brings people back to the moment, blowing away the heavy concerns of day-to-day living, especially in these times of public health emergency. There are many Calaisois(e) walking dogs, jogging, cycling, or just taking their phones for a walk, emphasizing the safety aspect of being out in the fresh air. There are numbers of genteel seafront bungalows, some constructed in modernist style with accompanying external artworks, sculpting á la Antony Gormley human figures in red fibreglass with ambiguous aspects of unfeeling neutrality being a prime example. However, it is impossible to feel neutral about the fact that just a matter of a few kilometres further up the coast, there are desperate displaced people living in tented hovels about to risk their lives crossing the channel in a flimsy, overcrowded rubber dinghy while I worry (since it is not included in the price) about where to get breakfast tomorrow morning. What a world of unremitting inequality our species has helped to create, a world of want and need for the many, excess and greed for the few!
After my quick preliminary seafront reconnaissance, I settle down to creature comforts in my own little room flanking the rear of the hotel with the gendarme invasion force parked right outside my window. I make a Whatsapp call to my wife worried about the fact that she hadn’t heard anything from my side over the past 6hrs as I crossed through La Belle France. But how to communicate the incommunicable, being in such a ‘zone’ that a sort of cocoon is created between the sense of being in an altered state away from ordinary day-to-day concerns; a state of serene tranquillity at the wheel of a reliable car with the open road in front of you and with the simple aim of getting from A to B safely. Everything reduced to first principles. Such things can only be felt or experienced first-hand. One such creature comfort is lying on the lit double quaffing the expensively purchased from the bar, L’Eau De Vie Du Aquitaine, munching a cereal bar and the last of the Sicilian mandarins brought over from Italy, while watching Italia 1 Svizzera 1 live on telly, and the normally reliable Jorginho (Italiano?) missing a last-minute penalty that would have given the Azzurri an undeserved victory – how they are now misfiring so badly only a matter of months after their ‘heroic’ Euros victory back in June when the whole country came alive with patriotic fervour! Calcio, the great unifier of a fragmented society! Meanwhile, there is the Marksman Kane on another channel as the ‘yeah, obviously’ striker superiore nets a first half hat-trick against the hapless Albanians, and I begin to slumber, finally nodding off around half-ten/eleven to sleep the sleep of the dead or self-righteous.
Impressions: Stage 4 (Calais – Lancaster)
Breakfast Brasserie full of gendarmerie! I decide to pay the extra for a bulky breakfast at 7.30am in the semi-darkness of morning. Outside there is a stiff breeze making me wonder if this will be a rough crossing. Inside there are enough strapping great rough-hewn police officers to quell a riot anytime anyplace. Indeed, every single breakfast diner is in uniform apart from me! One of them even greets and wishes me ‘bon journée’. I have never felt so safe and protected, wading into the brioches, croissantes, toast with jam & cheese, café au lait, hard boiled eggs, fresh fruit juice, but curiously no facility to conjure up a freshly-made omelette, much to the regret and embarrassment of the middle-aged breakfast serving madame on duty. In between the different phases of this breakfast repast fit for a Sun King, I head out and take a few snaps of a seafront in mid-wind buffet mode featuring a rolling in the stirred up breakers Irish Ferries vessel heading out of harbour towards Dover (not Dún Laoghaire) and a P&O swathed in orangey-yellow lights. At 8am, it is still a morning that is slow to stir itself into lightness.
A second café au lait quaffed, sea breezes gradually relenting, and I am on the promenade heading west, strolling past white beach huts, information boards, anchored into concrete exercise bikes, meditation huts and an elaborately-motived public transport shelter where you can await a ride on a Dragon Bus; a luminous white logo in the shape of the ol’ much-maligned one tells us so. To tell the truth, methinks the dragon always had himself a bum rap from the annals of legend and folklore, whilst the arch-fixer St. George always coated himself in the red cross of pompous self-righteousness – always have favoured the under-dog, or in this case under-dragon!
POETIC INTERLUDE 7 The Way Ahead. There. Across that stretch Of sea filled with shipping from all points Of the compass needle. The World. There. In that stretch with an endpoint. Dover. The Cliffs. Lyrical. Chalky white. But to get there, to reach there Is a way heavy with complication To protect a nation Is all about protraction. Wait on. It's well worth it. And for those With no patience, what is The reaction to that transgression? Done by nation upon nation. The state of where we are now a negation. Still, there is the Channel Seen (and Chunnel unseen) Intrepid swimmers The Armada, Galleons. Something Napoleonic. The 'One Thousand'. Dunkerque. Super freighters And sailing along on waters rough waters smooth. The weight of history in bulkhead movement And the crossing of all this to come.....
At the farthest extent I am willing to undertake at this time in the morning and with a ferry to catch, basically the end of the wide concrete promenade, there is an information board for promenaders/hikers: La Via Francigena De Calais Á Wissant, a colourful wooden sign showing the route over what looks like a pleasant coastal hike that takes the walker past Blériot-Plage and Cap Blanc-Nez amongst other seemingly colourful landforms along the 21.5km/13.35mile (5hr) journey. Later, while taking a few pictures of the beach and those photogenic beach huts, I notice two enormous super freighters out in the channel just beyond the harbour wall and lighthouse at its end making sedate progress towards the Kentish coast, twin pillars of mountains containers stacked up precipitously on the blue-hulled Cancun vessels all the way from the east coast of China to here, right here. These sea-going warehouses present huge obstacles for the desperate people looking to cross the channel. The contrast could hardly be more stark!
Time to wrap up the interesting pre-crossing perambulations of Calais Plage and its contrasting natural and man-made topography with general/personal perspectives before heading back to the loaded up and ready-to-go Georgia. First and second ‘port’-of-call – a petrol station and the ferry terminal which turns out to be almost as elusive as finding the correct slip road of Milano’s Tangenziale Est! The town burghers in their wisdom have established a series of detours as they go about setting up new access roads to the port area, so once again – this time in the light of day – I go around and around (having managed to fill up at a BP station) trying to catch that elusive pathway to the place where ‘my’ big boat lies in wait. Again (because of problems with the SAT-nav) I find myself having to ask Calaisoise the way to the means of sea-going escape: these are three in number – 1) a smiling, helpful jogger; 2) a jolly bespectacled middle-aged gent with three baguettes under his armpit negotiating the zebra crossing right in front of me; 3) a puzzled, confused, even apprehensive-looking young driver probably wondering how ANYONE can manage to get lost between leaving their local hotel and getting to the ferry terminal, especially in this age of hi-tech and SAT-nav? Eventually, I manage to tail one or two vehicles with the same intention as me and reach the entry point early enough to catch the P&O 10.20am sailing to Dover. Hotcha! Gotcha! By now the wind has completely reduced in howling power, now it’s just a whistle as I present both passports at the P&O check-in reception together with my ‘Passenger Locator’ form, and EU Digital COVID Certificate with the EU flag logo complete with one star too many. The receptionist presents ticket and tag (for car display) while suggesting I show only the UK passport at border control, but again I present both in case a stamp is needed in the Italian one. And then there’s the obligatory ‘wee chat’; ‘why am I entering UK in a foreign car?’ ‘How long am I staying?’ ‘Where do I/will I live?’ ‘Am I carrying any drugs?’ And then, the totally unexpected when this middle-aged female border official opines, “don’t blame you for leaving, it’s a bit rubbish here in Britain now!” Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather! She then gives the contents of the car no more than a cursory glance after I lift the covering sheet over the computer screen, panettones, winter clothing etc. A cheery cheerio later, then it’s up onto the ramp and into the hull we go, Georgia and I, about to add the ‘sea leg’ to the ‘land leg’ of our trans-European journey.
Out on the deck for ‘fresh air’ surrounded by HGV drivers smoking their bollocks off – since they seem exclusively male for some reason! This after the ship’s crew were situated at strategic parts of the inner deck area greeting what passengers there were, trying desperately to please and be helpful at the same time. “Outside deck? Certainly sir, that way, down the short flight of stairs on your left etc etc.”; “Canteen? Certainly sir, you go down…..”; “Toilet? Follow the signs on your left, go down…..”. How to keep your staff busy in employment during the hard times, in other words. But it appears for the majority of ferry crew members there is little for them to do other than acting as animate direction signage.
At last, the smokers on deck disappear. I have the whole area to myself. I look towards that part of the Normandy coast where any number of exploited, semi-permanently in-transit people would give their right arm to be where I am now, standing at leisure, space all around me, white cliffs in front of me.
I go inside. We are called to our vehicles as beautiful, pale-blue beaked gannets (as well as the more usual seagulls, cormorants ans guillemots) circle the ferry following the spray being churned up. It is a gorgeously evocative sight alien to the ‘Chunnelers’ down below! On the vehicle deck I have difficulty spotting little Georgia amongst the steepling high-sided lorries from France and Portugal on either side of her. Then the second surprise from white-shirted officialdom, I am waved through at Dover customs, not even interested in taking a peremptory look, just a casual wave towards the exit road to town. I am curiously disappointed that they have no curiosity in me or the car! So now, it’s the A2 to take up towards the capital in my left-hand drive motor. First though I divest myself of the heavy cream-coloured anorak I had been wearing on the ferry’s outside deck readying myself for the last stretch up into Lancashire; tune into Radio3 for the feeding of the soul on this Saturday back in Blighty, 9,5 months after leaving in January – just over a pregnancy later in the land of Brexit. Straight away on the radio there is the strong whiff of ‘Pax Europa’ with works by Beethoven, Sibelius, Brahms to soak into synapses, Tom Service, musicologist extraordinaire to pay attention to, music from film soundtracks to enjoy (featuring themes from the films of Clint Eastwood, including from his latest release made at the age of 91 as the romantic lead!). With this sonorous nirvana all around, I streak up to the Dartford Crossing which has a retrospective online payment system still in place. Wonder how many they chase up daily who haven’t bothered, or who have forgotten to pay? Must be in the hundreds, if not thousands! Then up onto the radial M25 under light grey non-threatening skies. As it’s a weekend on the road-to-nowhere, the lanes are shorn of the ‘big boys’, Saturday generally being non-HGV day with most drivers sitting with their feet up inside curtained cabins in rest areas up and down the country, waiting for Monday to roll around again. Well, maybe, but in these times of shortages on shelves, this may be theoretical only! The ‘shock’ of the left-hand drive driving on the left quickly wears off as I hurtle due north as the Corsa flies, hustling those annoying middle-lane hoggers as I go along.
Deciding on a single stop, I make it the Hilton Park Services, M6 Northbound doubling up as an under-siege Alamo, absolutely packed with inter-destination traveller/revellers or ravenous victual-beverage seekers. And it is right there I have an ‘argument’ with a non-coffee dispensing Costa coffee machine. All I am left with in hand is a chit for a coffee I didn’t have, enlisting a fellow Costa coffee queuer as ‘witness’, I accost the lanky, ginger-haired assistant on duty at Tesco Express and there is a swift resolution, a steaming hot cup of Costa cappuccino, my first in a while. For me, it is a reminder that it is a beverage that refuses to suffer in comparison with the many Italian provenance cappuccinos I have had in the interim. For food, I approach a tacos and wrap cabin at the entrance to the main multiple-outlet services area and discover that the only ones they had left were the non-veg/chicken variations on a theme. “Sorry, mate, ‘ad a run on them vegan-veggie ones, run out of ’em an hour ago, ‘ow’s bout..?” But before he could finish, and in an advance state of ‘ravenousity’, I am back inside the main building for a ploughman’s on rye sarnie at WH Smith’s or somesuch, the action conducted in such a blur that I couldn’t be sure!
As I munch, I mull…over the sights (Kentish) seen from the side of the A5, old WW2 bunker structures pointing out over the Channel awaiting the Nazi enemy, but much more charmingly, a retro Arcadian country retreat. An olde world vegetable garden and farm smallholding with miniature canals, miniature brightly painted barges, snow white jabbering geese and quacking ducks; also piebald donkeys and their black and grey cousins offered as rides for visitors, decorative trellises covered in ivy and vines, a barn with ‘permaculture centre’ painted in maroon gloss and matching coloured wooden framed and beamed barns with large-wheeled multi-coloured bicycles basketed front and rear entering and exiting at regular intervals (including a penny farthing). Some moving towards a maze made out of intricate Tuscan-style topiary. All overseen by heavily-whiskered farmers, sturdy in build, poring over ancient farm machinery in need of repair. Everywhere men wearing straw boaters and spotless dungarees and women in floral print dresses with matching extravagant headgear. A glimpse of what it could be like to live life as an ideal? Or was it just some kind of film set or even a mirage, a parallel service area to this one on a parallel motorway somewhere somewhen. Road fatigue sure can have some strange side effects and yet…..
Back on the road again mid-afternoon, the speeding cars along the M6 begin to thin out and the radio listening is mostly jazz, J to Z. It is a relaxed, peaceful state of mind that the soothing sonorities of Coltrane and Miles Davis drift upon and around me the closer I get to my destination until at around 6pm and after around 2 and a half days on the road and latterly across the sea, I enter Lancaster. Not long after, I am pulling into the car park and journey’s over with about a half-hour’s toing and froing from car to rooms to empty the car and a special greeting from my wife to come. It’s so good to be home again!