EN - Porto Cervo -Winchester day4

Today was the big day. Eurotunnel and left-side driving. Yes, the wrong side for me. I found that Reims is a must if you come from Italy to England. It is simply on the way. Plus you have plenty of hotels at a reasonable price. Getting to calais from there is also a matter of 270 Km:

Visualizzazione ingrandita della mappa

The journey was smooth but we paid 48€ for the toll motor-road. I was never being in the Eurotunner nor in a train witch loads cars, vans and trucks...
Anyway, they checked us and a couple of the 61 and more boxes i was carrying in the van. A bit annoying but a good thing for us and everyone traveling trough the eurotunnel. Though i was a bit scared about driving on the wrong side after a couple of «miles» and roundabout it come natural to drive on this side of the road. Obviously you have to pay a lot of attention to avoid disasters. The more problematic thing was the difference between french (private and not fee) motor-road and the English one. Quality of road signage and asphalt was really a step behind in england (which have free and public motor-road). We lost our road and passed trough some nice villages in the southern-england country side. Same thing as in france, but driving on the other side of the road. Mind thet we didn't had any gps navigator but only some google maps suggestion.
Anyway we reached winchester without mayor troubles and once in the center of the citi i was able to find my final destination easily, so we reached the boxes owner's house in the afternoon. We went then to the queen inn pub to have lunch and the mandatory English beer and then moved to the hotel. Giffard House hotel will be our harbour for two nights.

EN - Porto Cervo -Winchester day3

Champagne! Day off from driving today. Woke up at 11 o'clock so no breakfast at the hotel but had a sandwich near the cathedral in the center of the city. Bought a bottle of champagne "Blanc de Blanc" so 100% Chardonnay and drunk it just under the cathedral: But Reims doesn't offers much in a Sunday. Especially in August when everyone is on holydays. No cave to visit, no big champagne company to have a look at. So after drinking our bottle of champagne we had the idea of taking a train to Paris so we vent to the train station to search a train to Paris. Sadly the last one was 5 minutes before us, and so no Paris. Then we went to the reims country-side to see vineyards. Endless vineyards in fact. But still no luck, every little factory we found was closed. We only found a bar when we had another bottle of champagne and then went back to our Novotel in Tinqueux. Diner was two steps out the hotel, in a luckily goos grill restaurant. Tomorrow: Reims --EUROTUNNEL--> Winchester!!!

EN - Porto Cervo -Winchester day2

The long long road from Annecy to Reims has started. Long driving today for me, even when i was sure it will be a straight driving trough the motor-road. In fact it wasn't because of an incident and we had to take a "bis" route trough French country-side villages. This deviation wasn't so bad. Beautiful sights, very nice villages and some castles. Sadly the photographic equipment wasn't that professional (nor the photographer was) so i can't provide nice pictures: The deviation took about 3 hours and we re-joined the motor-road only 100 Km after the deviation! Yes, we lost a lot of time and i had to push the gas to make it to Reims before the night. Fortunately i didn't count that our position was rather northern than sardinia so i colud count on approximately an hour plus of sunlight, and so was. we reacher Reims arount 10 o'clock and the light was still fading! It is amazing how many differences you can find moving on this planet! Anyway. We reached safely Reims and had our double in the booked Novotel in Tinqueux