A Motorhome from England to the Alps

While it can be done in a day on the rapid French toll roads, it’s taken us almost a full week to drive our motorhome down to the Alps. Well, almost the Alps. We’re parked on a Camping-Car Park aire in the village of Virignin, about a 30 min drive from Aix-Les-Bains and Chambéry. The really high mountains are to the east and south of us, accessed via fast valley roads and more sinuous routes up along their slopes, another hour or two away.

A week ago we were sat in our usual pre-departure spot, the popular park-n-ride motorhome aire at Canterbury. With an incoming heatwave, our only plan was to get our pre-booked Dover-Dunkirk ferry the following morning. Then we’d find some shade and sit it out before deciding where to go. We’d about four weeks free, so enough time for a decent wander about but were clueless destination-wise.

A short detour if I may: the EU’s decided they can’t just have all-and-sundry wandering about the bloc, so have decided to implement a new Entry and Exit System (EES). The promise of this seems to be (a) longer queues at Dover and every other port/airport/the Shuttle and (b) if we accidentally exceed the 90 day rule, we’re toast. Since Brexit, good old Cold War era passport stamps have been used to track how long we’ve spent in the Schengen Area. These are hard to systematically check, especially at busy crossing points and for folks with many short journeys. At a wild guess, I’d say a fair few people are overstaying their 90 day allocation, but very few are being picked up.

The EES will robotically remove all of that. Overstay and expect a big flashing red light, the roar of savage dogs and being dragged off to the Calais dungeon. Or something like that. What the actual sanctions will be, I’ve no idea, but it’s going to be interesting to see what happens when this true level of post-Brexit enforcement comes into force.

The EES is already slowing things down. Six or so lanes of queuing traffic at Dover are being shuffled down into three to allow new booths to be built. We sweated our way along for an hour, while a big soothing sign told us not to worry, if we missed our ferry we’d be placed on the next one. All the while I’d an image of driving from France into Belgium, where there’s nothing at the border. No booths, no police, no passports, no customs checks, no-one insisting you have no pet food in your cupboards or bacon in the freezer, nowt. You just drive across. And back again if you fancy. Call that a border? Rubbish. Get some barbed wire and sentry posts up lads.

It was tight in the end but we made our ferry. I was just having a chat with neighbours who were heading off as a couple without kids for the first time in a couple of decades when the queue started to move. The boat left a few minutes early, probably because half the people were still stuck in the EES-booth-building queue. Under a blue sky we and half the other passengers occupied the rear deck and watched the white cliffs retreat. Always a good feeling this, the romantic sense of departure.

On arrival in France we took to the motorways and cruised 90 minutes south to a Camping-Car Park aire at Arleux (you can book this type of aire and see how full they are with an app – more info here). Never heard of Arleux? Us neither, but it had tree shade and was based on an old municipal campsite, so we could sit outside on grass and wait out the beating sun. There wasn’t much there, even the local boulangerie was closed, although we learned it’s the home of smoked garlic, who knew? While there we enjoyed walking and running along the Canal du Nord with its huge barges, and just ambling about the village and its lakes.

Unsure where to go, we picked Cambrai half an hour south, heading to the municipal site in easy walking distance of the center (there’s an unofficial map of these sites here). Like many of these low-cost, no-frills sites, reception closes for an endless lunch break. At this one it was from midday until 5pm, but they’re a practical bunch and allow you to drive in, get pitched up and come back after 5 and check in. Turned out to be a good place, a nice site and we were lucky to find France’s largest fun fair (literally) had pitched up across the entire city centre.

Fun parades, huge rides, flashing arcades, giant meat roasting spits, the lot. We loved it and walked back a few times to take it all in. Sadly the cathedral was under renovation, but we nipped into the Spanish-era tourist information office and learned the town was the site of the first large-scale tank battle, and it’s also riddled with man-made tunnels and caverns.

We’d all-but-decided to head up to the Dutch coast from Cambrai, wincing slightly at the €60 a night campsite fees. We kept mentioning the Alps to each other, but the 10-hour drive each way and the €100-odd tolls were putting us off. Maybe we needed a wee while to get over the drive across England and down into Northern France, but the day of leaving Cambrai we switched tact and decided to get off south.

Engaging hyperdrive (60mph), we hit the toll roads and cruised for four hours or so down to an aire at Savigny-le-Sec, just north of Dijon. Again, there was nothing much there. A tiny village built in yellow stone, it was nice to amble around for a few minutes, looking at the chickens cooped next to the aire and old photos the locals had used to relay the history of the place, but that was about it.

My other memory is of the English couple parked next to us. After engaging in a loud argument when they arrived, they were obviously over it when they decided to pump out a bit of Paolo Nutini at 10pm, singing along with more ‘banter’ about whether he was in fact Scottish. Another vanner out did them for noise by arriving at 11:30pm, making doubly-sure the entire aire was awake by revving their way onto the ramps and testing each of their locker doors in turn. Aires: cheap, but utterly lawless places folks. :-)

This morning the rain came so we hit the autoroute again. Another 3 hours or so brought us down to a freebie parking spot 30 minutes from here. It looked cool enough, flat and shaded in a small village backed by cliffs and small vineyards. But it also looked boring. It was a tiny commune, it was only 2pm, and we’d already walked up to the ‘viewpoint’, so we’d have been sat there without much going on. The only temptation to stay was the fact we’d managed to get the fridge to stay lit, which had taken 9 minutes of faffing about. The thermocouple appears to be bust, we dunno.

We decided to decamp and headed here via a small corniche road built into a cliff face, a taste of things to come I guess! It took me back to some of the crazy drives we’ve had over the years. Virignin is on the banks of a man-made river which flows from and back into the Rhone, created to power a whacking great hydro plant a short walk away as well as some huge locks. It’s a nice, calm spot, a marina and fields backed by cliffs with riverside cycle paths and greenery all around. We were lucky enough to get here in time to see the horse and trap competition that was taking place in the field next to the aire too.

What’s next? Not sure. We might head over the sinuous Col du Chat (or under the narrow tunnel) to Aix-Les-Bains. Or maybe turn south and head towards Mont Blanc. Dunno. We’ve spent a bit of time in the Alps, Vercors and Provence, and liked it all, so anywhere around here will do us nicely for the next couple of weeks.

Cheers, Jay