Bulletin from the Auvergne

By some miracle, the grass was just dry enough to cut yesterday, even after a number of wet days, so that’ll make hacking it down again fractionally easier when we return next month. 

We were booked on a shuttle at 07:20, so were at Folkestone by 06:30, after a pleasant ride along the country lanes as far as Ashford.  Sightings included countless magpies, rabbits, two green woodpeckers and a goldfinch.  Later sightings included beer-swigging Poles (at 07:00), presumably on their way to the match in Marseille on Tuesday night.  The van in front of us on the shuttle housed four men and three women.  Friendships may be made or broken between this morning and when they finally return, I suspect.  The car behind us had four hulking blokes in it.  Another interesting vehicle on the shuttle was a 1920s open Bugatti racer.  I don't think I've ever heard a straight-eight engine before: it sounded rather busy!   (On a previous trip we shared a train with a 1920s Le Mans Bentley.)   

Queues for passport checks were longer than I've ever seen them.  It's a rare event for the French border police to do other than wave one through from behind a closed window.  This time they seemed to check thoroughly - though not to the extent of limiting their discussion of the football.  Well, we arrived 20 minutes early, and left three quarters of an hour late, so have had enough of the tunnel terminal to last us a few lifetimes.  It had not helped, of course, that the train ahead of hours had been cancelled - though the logic of our train being delayed on that account somehow escapes me.

The journey south was largely uneventful, though slightly different from our usual  With all the strikes in France, one of which had led to fuel supply disruption, we set off from the UK with a full tank, and didnt't stop as usual at Marquise to fill up.  A later complication was that the aire where we normally swap seats just before Paris was closed, as was the car park after the last péage.  As there's nowhere else to pull over without leaving the motorway (and getting lost), Martyn got stuck with the Paris shift.  There is something about the A15/A86 route that brings out the worst in Parisian driving.  Martyn's unflappable driving got us safely through to other side, and I took over when we stopped to top up the tank at Vélizy.

There was more motor sport on the A71 south of Vierzon.  A BMW M5 zoomed past us, followed by a heavily breathed-on Mégane and a BMW hairdressers' soft-top two seater.  Hot on their heels was a gendarme on a motorbike, and it was with some grim satisfaction that we saw the lot of them pulled over a few miles further down.  Much notice they took.  The gendarmes no doubt detained them for a quarter of an hour or so, but it wasn't long before they all zoomed past us again.  We'd been travelling at the speed limit, so they must have been driving a fair bit over it again.  

The A10 north of Orléans still shows signs of the after-effects of flooding.  There are pipelines and pumping engines over a stretch of a few miles, and the inside lane is coned off.  At least it has re-opened, and lightish Sunday traffic wasn't unduly hindered by the lane closure.  Friday nights may be somewhat different...

Early supper at the Buffalo Grill the other side of the motorway: adequate.  We've learned from experience not to eat at the usual flophouse.  Less far to drive tomorrow: it usually takes about four hours for the last stretch.  And so to bed.