And at the third attempt......

...we finally made it for our day booze cruise to France yesterday.  We first tried to go nearly three weeks ago, but were discouraged by the check-in clerk because of the risk of more disruption later in the day at the port of Calais by strikers burning tyres at the entrances to the ferry port.  (They were protesting at the forced divestiture of Eurotunnel's ferry company and probable consequent redundancies.)  We re-booked for one day last week, but at the end of the lengthy booking process, the woman at the call centre said the risk was still high.  She advised us to let the booking stand, and if need be re-book using the same reservation number once the smoke had cleared.  Martyn re-booked for yesterday - another lengthy and bug-ridden booking process.

On the depressingly frequent occasions when ferry workers, trawlermen, fishmongers' aunties or whoever are blockading the port of Calais, the build up of lorries on the M20 means that stretches have to be closed between two and five junctions, and other traffic diverted to the old A20, a process known as Operation Stack.  Having heard that it had been cleared by Monday, off we went.  The side of the motorway is still decorated at intervals with portable privies (though the intervals at which they are set suggest that they'll actually be used for one visit in a hundred at best).  Further towards Dover, trucks and cars were segregated into the left and right-hand lanes respectively, and for much of the hill down into Dover, the left lane was solid with stationary lorries.  We breezed past and straight into the port, did passport checks, and rolled up to the check-in.  'Ah yes', sez the clerk, 'I see there's an extra £130 to pay'.  'No there isn't!' and we explained the whole sorry tale of wasted journeys and ages spent on the telephone.  Closes window, calls supervisor.  'OK, nothing extra to pay'.  Good start, blood pressure up.  I then got us lost on the way to our designated lane, and had to do sundry loops and U-turns to get us back on course.

We were booked on the Pride of Burgundy, which we think is the oldest vessel in the P&O fleet, and it shows.  Grubby saloons, manky carpets, smelly lavvies.  Just like the old British Railways boats in the 1970s - nostalgic, really!  Still, at 28'000 tons, it's rather more comfortable than the 3-4'000 tonners of those days, and had we not seen the white caps (barely, through the filthy windows) we'd hardly have known we were on the water.  The grubby, crumbling window seals and flaking rusty metalwork on the outside window frames hardly inspired confidence, however, and on the way back, our tables and chairs were only notionally connected to the fabric of the vessel.  It got us there and in due course back, however.  School examinations over, there's an interval of a few weeks until end of term.  So what do they do with the sprogs?  Yep: day trips to France.  Enough said: the crossings were not restful.

The purpose of the trip was to get some fizz etc for a forthcoming event, and that part of it was fine.  We had a pretty decent and inexpensive lunch in a Crocodile restaurant next to the Auchan in Dunkirk, and the vast shed provided us with all we were looking for.  (I appear, however, in my haste to get out, to have picked up a 12-pack of pink, peach-flavoured beer.  Much ribaldry will doubtless ensue.)

Pleasant amble back on departmental roads via Gravelines and Grand-Fort-Philippe.  I'd only really associated Gravelines with the complex of six nuclear power plants on the coast, the largest such installation in western Europe - and with a moderately unsuccessful basketball team.  But the twin towns of Gravelines and GFP boast a rather fine Vauban fortress, and they appear to be vying for a ville fleurie award: the plantings are really rather good, even running to a scattering of deliberately sown wild flowers by the roadsides outside town.  It was low tide, so the estuary of the Aa was not at its most charming, but it's clearly a mecca for small boaters.

Well, after that nice interlude, we clanked back to Calais, topped up the tank with a modicum of diesel, and then ran the gauntlet of a double row of tall, razor wire-topped fences installed (at UK expense, I think) to cut the numbers of refugees etc getting to UK on lorries.  Rolled up to check-in.  'Ah yes', sez the clerk, 'I see there's an extra £130 to pay'.  'No there isn't!' and we explained, yet again.  Closes window, calls supervisor.  'OK, nothing extra to pay.  Would you like to leave on an earlier ferry?'  'Yes, please.'  'Oh, sorry: you're too late.'  Well, we sat in the queue for a good half hour watching said earlier ferry doing the square root of bugger-all, then in due course rumbled on to the bad old Pride of Burgundy for the sail back.  Once the sprogs had finished their copiously vinegared fish and chips and pushed off elsewhere, it was quite pleasant sitting looking out over the sharp end and wondering whether we'd be attempting to get through between two towering container ships, or swinging round a bit to pass behind the second.  Latter, alas!  The car, meanwhile, was out on deck at the blunt end, acquiring a layer of salt spray.

Uneventful ride home, thank goodness, although by then, the lorry queue stretched back from Dover to the Channel tunnel entrance, some twelve miles distant.  The stretch of motorway before the segregated section was chaos.  Glad we were pointing west.  Well, what do we learn?  Forget the ferries, or certainly the older P&O ferries.  The tunnel experience is gravely boring, but you can at least read a book or take a nap, and it's over quickly.  The ferries are a fine example of Sartre's much-misinterpreted line, l'enfer, c'est les autres, and they take too long.  The Channel tunnel process is pretty slick and rapid, whereas the port of Dover is incredibly complicated, and is forever being tinkered with to adapt to the ever-changing passport and security regulations.  There must be people in the port administration who'd like to dynamite the lot and start again.  Same's probably true of Heathrow, come to think of it, but in the interests of getting this published this year, I'll park that thought pro tem.