Advance to France
The day has come 4th June 2022, after months of planning, building and double checking absolutely everything, we set off on our 250 mile trip from the North of England to Newhaven ferry terminal to catch our ferry to Dieppe, France.
On our way to down to the South of England we made a detour to a Ian Varley's off the grid cabin near Bradgate park, Leicestershire. We met Ian nearly 1 year ago to the day previously whilst hiking up the famous peak of Suilven in the North west, Highlands of Scotland and since then he had became a good friend. Ian has many stories of his younger years where he dirtbagged his way around the world, so spending time with him is always a great experience listening to his trips on the Cuillin Ridge Isle of Skye, Himalayas, India, South Africa, America and many more places.
Ian recently started a lockdown project of writing all his adventures into a collection of 3 books called 'Adventures of a Dirtbag Dharma Bum' - Ian has self published the books and all proceeds go to Alzheimer's society charity. I've read 2 of the 3 books, as I wait in anticipation for vol 3 to arrive. I love the honesty and rawness of the books and would recommend anyone intrigued by adventure to give them a read.
Shortly after arriving at Ian's cabin, he took us around his stomping ground of Bradgate Park, a lovely, tranquil and scenic country park, followed by a meal cooked on the open fire in the surroundings of his cabin.
We enjoyed our evening with Ian, Frankie(Ian's cute dog), a few beers and great conversation.
The South Coast of England
We woke up on the Sunday morning after a heavy night of rain fall and began the rest of of journey to the south coast. We wasn't due to get the Ferry until Monday afternoon, so we headed to Brighton for the day. We had both never been to Brighton and was excited to see what the famous coastal town had to offer.
We parked up and to be completely honest we were both a little unsure about the place and it wasn't quiet what we expected, but we had only just left the car park and tried not to judge it too quickly. As we were walking around we quite enjoyed the seaside town and had a nice walk down the front and on the pier followed by a lobster roll with some performing street art behind us.
Our short lived visit to Brighton was over, and to be frank we probably wouldn't return, not because we didn't like the place but Blackpool's only 40 miles up the road from us and we prefer donuts to lobster rolls.
We headed for our stop over at Newhaven Ferry terminal, only a short drive from Brighton and it had already started to feel more peaceful. We found our overnight stop using park4night and they let Motorhome stay right on the harbour for £10 a night. We don't normally like paying for overnight stays but this one was well worth it, the views were incredible, The Harbour to our front with Newhaven Fort behind us, enriched in WW2 History, we had to go and explore.
The coastal path from the harbour leads you up and behind the fort running parallel with the white chalk cliffs of Newhaven. The cliffs tops are laced with WWII Bunkers and gun bases and was extortionary to be able to walk around and over the history of the war.
On our return to the van we got chatting to the 'station manager' of the 'National Coastwatch institution' tower overlooking the Newhaven bay. The station manager invited us up to the tower to look out of their MASSIVE binoculars and chat with the workers who volunteer their time to protect the coast of Britain, the fishermen and the beach goers.
Its Ferry time
The time had come, the moment we have been so excited and also anxious for...its time to head into Europe.
After a recommendation from a friend, he mentioned that the ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe was much easier, cheaper and a more pleasant experience. The ferry cost us £114 for the van and two passengers, to us these seemed really reasonable and the terminal was so easy. I have never travelled via the Euro tunnel or the Dover to Calais so I personally can not compare but from what I have heard, it can be absolute chaos, so it was a pleasant surprise to get such an easy on boarding and crossing. The crossing time is longer than Dover to Calais but it was till only 4 hours, which gave us plenty of time to ponder on what lay ahead.
We'd arrived in France at 10pm Monday 6th June, a date neither of us would probably ever forget. we looked for places to stop in Dieppe, but as you can imagine with the port being in this town, parking was quite expensive, so after a quiet passport check we taken a short 30 minute drive out of Dieppe to Saint Valery, where we found a quiet place to park, a 30 second walk from sea views, surrounded by fields and also a memorial for the first every flight between France & New York.
