As I write – or rather, dictate this – I’m charging through France on my way to the Channel Tunnel. I can’t even count how many times I’ve done this journey: almost always with Jo over the last 20 years or so but also a small handful of times on my own. I know this route so well that every section of motorway is familiar now: all the curves, the hills, the distant water towers, industrial-sized mills amongst the fields, the church spires, the service stations, the towns, the big cathedral on the hill (which I want to photograph at some point) and the prominently-positioned windmill and inland lighthouse that keep calling my drone but which I have yet to visit.
I can’t always remember the exact order of the landmarks, but many are now very familiar. I know where the TGV bridges appear, the flyover bridges which have their own speed limits posted over just a few hundred metres, and which service stations are worth stopping at. Jo and I have worked out the best ones, which the French call “aires”, over the years. The best place for lunch, being about two hours from home, is Aire de service du Haut-Koenigsbourg in the Alsace region, which we re-christened “stork services” because of the birds which nest there on specially-erected poles in the car park.
Four hours from home, there’s a forested rest area on a hill, to which I’ve often pushed through with a packed lunch when travelling alone, but the name of “the four winds” (Aire de Quatre-Vents) belies the fact that it is just a view-less toilet block and car park in the woods next to the motorway.
In recent years the most definite “must-stop” point on our way to England is the Aire de Reims Champagne Nord. That’s the afternoon coffee and loo break and one of the most attractive stops of the entire journey, with views across miles of vineyards. At this time of year, that’s usually where the light begins to fade — from Reims to the Channel in winter is dark because there are so few towns close to the motorway.
There are only two petrol stations along that stretch of the A4 and it’s always a challenge to see whether I can reach the tunnel without refuelling. Perhaps one day, with minimal luggage, I might manage it. I used to get much further in my old Volkswagen Golf – the Audis I’ve driven for the last ten years are thirstier. It’s a sign of the times that the last couple of rest stops before the Channel have been closed to the public for several years because of people trying to smuggle themselves onto lorries bound for Britain.
The giant slag heaps at Lens, which I’m passing as I dictate this second part of the blog post, are a sign that I’m not all that far from the end of the long cruise through the surprisingly hilly countryside. It’s perhaps an hour to the Channel Tunnel terminal at Coquelles from here. It’s easy to estimate timings accurately thanks to the low volume of traffic and constant speeds, and the m.p.g. on this section seems to climb because of the many ascents and descents across the hilly landscape. Christmas on this section is much busier, with British cars heading home after trips to the European Christmas markets, but this autumn evening there are only lorries and the occasional British SUV heading home.
The landscape throughout the day isn’t all that exciting once I get away from Alsace and the Vosges mountains a quarter of the way into my journey, but the familiarity is reassuring. I can always tell how far along I am. Once in a while I get to see a TGV passing alongside the motorway at high speed, although that’s happened fewer than half a dozen times in all these years.
The trip to England usually feels much quicker than the return journey, and I rarely need to stop for a proper break. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found it better to take a break every couple of hours for a walking lap of the service station’s lorry park, helping to avoid joint pain and potential circulatory issues and making the overall journey much easier. The weather on this trip hasn’t been great, but the damp autumn leaves which have recently fallen have made the rest areas quite photogenic.
Despite driving this route for so many years, I’ve hardly taken any photos of it, apart from the occasional drone shot above a service station. There are empty-looking villages and silent fields with barely a tractor. Huge skies and endless clouds reaching into the distance are a welcome change from the narrow corridors of sky we get at home.
With a nicely mathematical direct journey of 888 km from home to Coquelles, we always get to see differing weather conditions. Smooth motorway in patchy sunshine is a blessing; heavy rain, fog or darkness can make the journey much more taxing. I had to pull onto the hard shoulder once during a torrential downpour, when it was unsafe to continue, and one memorable foggy storm added a great deal of time to the journey because of how slow we had to travel between Strasbourg and Colmar.
We used to stay over in France en route — at Reims, Arras, Lille, Saint-Omer and Châlons-en-Champagne to name a few — but with more experience and a more comfortable and modern car these days, it’s become possible to make the whole journey in one go. Although it sounds like a nice little get-away, the chances of ending up mid-journey in a gloomy Ibis budget hotel with a creaky bed, noisy neighbours and a faint smell of damp is comparatively high. We once stayed in quite a nice hotel in Reims with a view of the cathedral, having “steak frites” for dinner and crêpes for breakfast, but the cost outweighed us considering doing that again. A particularly memorable stopover in Reims when Jo moved to Switzerland was one of the greatest highlights of these trips, though the hotel wasn’t .
This time, it isn’t a photographic trip or a holiday in France, so I won’t see the sights again. Maybe one day it would be nice to take two or three days for the journey, stay in decent hotels or gîtes, visit the places we always speed past, and finally explore the landscape we’ve criss-crossed so many times over the years.
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