What a fantastic time we had going over to the Grand Rederie de Amien. We set off in our Nissan Micra Maureen, closely followed by our 30 yr old Volkswagenlt Valerie. Follow our journey from start to finish and our stops along the way from zoos to steam engines.
Here is a taster of what’s to come 😍

We sailed from Newhaven to Dieppe leaving Lancaster at 7p.m to get the 11a.m sailing in the morning. I realised going to France that the roads and the way they are managed in England is appalling compared to France. The sat-nav said it would take us 5hrs 38 minutes it actually took 7 and half hours!!!! The drive down was awful, they had closed the motorway in two sections and on diversion was about 20 miles. All the way down the motorway was reduced constantly to 40 and 50 mph zones, even though the motorway was relatively quiet. There was miles and miles of cones reduced down to one lane with NO work going on. We even faced a road closure at the very end of our journey they had even closed the road to the port!!!! It was an awful miserable drive and the condition of the roads were poor. You could turn around and say well if they are appalling why are you moaning that they are doing roadworks? Fair point. But why is France so different and so much better then?
They also have what I think is a great idea, they allow people to park on pavements that are wide, so it still allows wheelchair access, but you never have problems parking which we never did. It is much better than England where they try and make a blanket ban for all pavement parking.

Anyway less of the moaning and back to my Grand Tour of France. We got the ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe. It cost £175 with Direct Ferries for two people and our Nissan Micra. We arrived at Newhaven at 3a.m and had a sleep in the car park, we had to be 90 minutes early for the ferry time of 11 a.m, prior to that we went into Newhaven for some brekky. In town there are quite a few shops and cafes and a Bureau de Change.
The first video of the start of our journey is here, the first vid has a lot of mechanics in it, if you are not into that do not despair, the next episodes have everything from glorious boutiques to yummy scummy cake shops 😍 I hope you enjoy.
https://youtu.be/O137XFewD2Q

We then went to look all around Dieppe and here is Episode Three

https://youtu.be/1_xwhIpwrEw


Harry Potter Shop Dieppe