The Dunkerque Ferry and London. 2015 🇧🇪🇫🇷🇬🇧

Travelled: 206 kilometres from Ypres, Belgium to London, England.
Visited: Dunkerque Ferry, France.
Stay: Back in beautiful Wildhill.

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Well today’s the day, we booked a ferry passage from Dunkerque at 10am so it’s an early start from Ypres.  Winter must be coming, it’s still very dark at 7am when we fold up the windscreen cover and make the Hymer ready.  By 7.30 we are rolling out of Ypres following a couple of large trucks, still in the dark.  The drive to the port of Dunkerque is about an hour, but we stop and fill with deisel and LPG which add an extra 15 minutes.

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France

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Arriving promptly on time a 9am we join the check-in queue and go through the usual processes before joining line 0, behind a couple of other motorhomes and vans, relax and have a coffee.  At 9.30 we start loading and the ferry departs on time.  So different to the chaotic process in Greece.

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Rolling off the ferry into the mist at Dover there’s little to see and we chat about the wonderful places we’ve been and the interesting people we’ve met.   There’s very little traffic as we turn onto the M25 and soon enough we see the turn for Potters Bar.  Whilst we still have a week to clean up the Hymer, spend some time with family and have a day or two in London, our motorhome adventure for 2015 is complete.  It’s been a long drive but as always Pam is a great navigator and second pair of eyes, given our Hymer is a right hand drive.

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A Short Summary.

While we cannot control or predict the political tensions in Turkey we can say we found Turkey a safe and friendly country.  The Turkish people are generally very friendly and helpful, although they rarely give you back the correct change.  Turkey has some of the most dramatic scenery we’ve experienced and it’s reasonable inexpensive.  Whilst Turkey is not particularly campercar friendly we had no trouble finding places to service the Hymer, in fact it was easier than Greece.  Wild camping wasn’t a problem for us, but most of the time we were parked by ourselves which is not ideal.

The financial crisis in Greece had little or no effect on our travels.  We did take a reasonably large amount of euros in cash into Greece, but we found we could access cash from ATMs without a problem.  The only resulting issue was that Greece is clearly not as cheap as it may have been.  The GST of 23% is savage, the only exception being fresh food which still carries a 13% GST.  We wondered how much of this GST finds its way back to the government.  Most small businesses won’t take a credit card only cash.  Greece has a wonderfully laid back atmosphere, the short daily driving and contrast between beaches and mountains make it ideal for motorhoming.  However there are virtually no public toilets in Greece, and service facilities for motorhomes just as rare.

Summary of our Travels and Expenses 2015

Travelled: 11,062 kilometres by road.

Stayed: 63 different location.

Visited: 8 countries including overnight stopovers in Singapore.

Budget: 71 days @ €84.80 per day totalling €6020.

Ferries: 6 journeys by ferry totalling €1159

Michael and Pam