Travelling in our Motorhome

With the ferry at 0945 we decided that with 14 miles to drive to Dover, we would get up at 0645.

My planned leaving time was 0745. We eventually packed the last stuff in the moho and set off at 0743!

It was pretty easy going and the rat trap maze through the works was navigable. At French passports there were only two cars ahead of us and we were quickly through. As we travel on British passports we checked the dates on the stamps... 😉

Boarding Liberté meant going up to deck 7 behind another moho. It seems this isn't the usual RoRo boat.

The pet lounge on deck 9 is easy enough to locate. Today there are 7 humans and 4 dogs.

And away we go. The captain said sea conditions are moderate to rough. As we exited through the harbour wall into the channel we started to roll.

Next stop France.

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We actually left at 0935 as everyone was onboard. The crossing wasn't that bad and we were in sight of Calais when we had to slow as the berth we were to go on was occupied. It turned out to be P&O Pioneer.

So the time we had in hand evaporated.

We were off relatively quickly. In the almost 50 years of travelling through Calais, this is the cleanest air has ever been.

Our first stop is the Picard at Coquelles to collect three kilos of "dogador" for Reggie. There are many Picard stores across France, but few seem to stock it. It's 100% "volatile" so it needs some veggies added to it.

On the way we past the roundabout that has one of the tunnel borers on it. We have passed this so often but never taken a picture! There's a first time for everything.

Once away from there we aimed for the Intermarche at Abbeville. But not before a lunch stop at the A16 Aire Baie de la Somme. We have stopped here many times. It's changed a bit. Now sporting a Pizza Hut and Starbucks!

The Intermarche and other outlets is on the site of the old sugar factory. All that remains is the chimney. I guess as fashions change, industries come and go.

We bought "essentials" and then set off.

There are no spaces set aside for larger vehicles so we parked away from the store across three bays. It wasn't busy at all. The exit onto the service road alongside the old N1 is also tight and it looks as though larger heavier vehicles has ripped some of the kerb up.

Backtracking a little returned us to the A28, then off via Aumale to Formerie. We arrived just before 1700.

It rained before we got the Taylormade screen cover on. My windscreen sponge/squeegee cleared it.

Dinner was a simple one of cider and toast and pate.

Tomorrow? We head south.

(The photos appear to have disappeared but not from here -

Anyone that ready the previous post with this title will have seen that the planned route for coming home included the Somport Tunnel. Yes, I know. We haven't gone yet.

But you need to have a rough idea where you are going. Anyway, due to the terrible weather earlier in the late summer into autumn the road leading to the Somport on the French side has been washed away. It looks like a large piece of roadway and the structure underneath that has gone!

Reports are that it will take six months to fix. Of course, with the onset of winter that will make the job harder and no doubt take longer?

So we will need to plan a different route home. I have been looking at going to the Biscay coast and heading northwards that way. It would mean a bit of toll motorway around Irun to cross into France. It will need more fine tuning as we get nearer the time. Luckily I can use the TomTom planning app on my phone or MS Surface to sync to the Camper Max satnav to change the route as and when we need to.

I have already got the vet at Cavignac booked for 1030am on the 21st October. So two longish days on the road should see us there as we are due to leave Alcoceber on Saturday morning.

Fingers crossed that we get to go on the holiday at all. A few medical problems have arisen over the last four to six weeks that have put things n doubt.

So after a bit more work with apps and the map book, I have two now, I have a kind of route planned for the journey from the ferry port at Calais to the apartment in Alcoceber.

In total four overnight stops on the way down. The first has been booked for months as it is a small Camping-Car Park Aire (CCP) with only 6 pitches and it does get full quite early. Hence we booked an earlier ferry so that we can arrive in daylight (!) and maybe choose the pitch rather than being the last in and having what's left! That's at Formerie.

For the second overnight I was looking at a place on the Loire at either Bonny or Beaulieu sur Loire. They aren't too far apart but it looks as though all the rain in France has caused flooding and both the sites seem to be closed "temporarily". One is a municipal aire and the one at Beaulieu is a CCP aire.

This meant a rethink. Not that far away and still showing as open is the aire at the marina in Châtillon-sur-Loire. I dropped them an email today to see that everything is okay. The aire looks really nice. The overnight price on the website looks very competitive.

Using the ruler and counting the "squares" on the map on the inside cover of the map book, I have calculated that with a lot of toll-free motorways on the A77/N7/A75 we could cover more ground on day 3. So once again I was looking on Search4sites and the CCP website. I have found what looks like a very nice aire at La Canourgue to the north of Millau and the famous bridge. I've not booked it as it's easy enough to check out the pitch availability on the app when on the way.

I have some credit left on my CCP account as we topped it up in May/June and didn't use it all plus I found an error in my calculations meant I was £38 in credit on the Halifax Clarity card we use in Europe. So I used €40 of that and topped up a bit more onto the CCP card. It makes booking aires in advance easier and also, when tapping in and out it takes it off the card and not off the bank card.

From there we will have an exciting €16 journey over the Viaduc de Millau. It's one of the few tolls we should encounter along the route. Apart from the A16 from Boulogne to Abbeville, and the A9 to get to the Spanish border that is!

The fourth and last stop I am planning is at Saint-Cyprien Plage Marina aire. We stayed there in November 2022 and it was perfect for what we needed for a single overnight. Hopefully it won't be full, but there are alternatives not too far away on the CCP app. One of the reviews gives it low marks because it's "*basically a tarmac parking area*" - that's what aires are unless they are former campsites!

This time next week we should be on our pitch at the Marina at Châtillon-sur-Loire. 😁

This was a last minute decision really. After having the last two trips cancelled by the weather and then a few dental emergencies we wanted to get away. I chose the Premier Parks site at Fishery Creek on Hayling Island primarily as it's not that far away, not north of the Dartford Crossing and had hardstanding!

We picked Molly up from the storage site on Thursday afternoon and then started to put the stuff we'd need for a weekend.

Friday.

The plan was to leave on Friday morning, late enough to avoid the traffic. Claire had a massage booked for 10am. I was putting stuff in the van when the carbon monoxide detector started to beep. A single beep every thirty seconds is, according to the Kidde website, showing that the battery has expired or about to expire.

So whilst she was being pampered I drove to Wickes in Folkestone and bought a new one. It's not that long ago that the one in the house had the same problem. The van version was supposed to have been installed in the van when new in 2019. Kidde claims a ten year battery life and a five year warranty.

The former should have plenty of life and the latter probably expired now. When I took the old one to pieces all three of the AA batteries in the unit had an expiry date of 3/26. I assume from that date the unit was three years old when installed. Whoever did it didn't bother writing anything on the information label!

As the new one didn't have the same mounting plate as the house one, I decided to swap them over. The house one easily screwed to the ceiling near to where the old one had been. It was a five minute job. As I was sitting admiring my skills (!) there was another peep! Followed by another peep! What are the chances that the battery in the smoke detector had gone too? At least this isn't a sealed unit.

Of course we didn't have the 9v rectangular battery it needed. So off to Sainsbury's to get one. It's easily installed. So now we can go! We set off at about 12.40pm. Aaarrgghh.

The TomTom Go Camper Max had decided that the shortest but equally time consuming route was along the south coast on the A259/A27 route. The options would take the same sort of time and go via the motorways M20/M26/M23 and be longer but the same sort of time!

Well. With only a short stop for a coffee and a Reggie comfort break we arrived about 5.40pm.The A259/A27 route passes through too many places like Hastings and Bexhill with very few service areas unlike the motorway route would have given us more options. Added to that was that there were too many roadworks!

On the way to the pitch we filled with water. I say filled. I have no idea how much water we took on as the gauge didn't light up at all. Once on pitch 118 and on the ramps and electric hooked up we had a walk to look at the creek and round past the end of the site. The tide was out.

Then we went around to the bar to see what was there. In the reception building there is a small restaurant and a few days they have "guest" providers. Friday was a fish and chip van. It was earlier than we usually would eat, but as we were there we ordered fish and chips each and as it was being cooked we had a drink on the terrace.

The fish was absolutely huge. Nice batter, and just the right amount of chips. That evening we watched a few vloggers on the TV with my phone connected to the Amazon Firestick.

As the evening progressed Reggie was restless and I ended up doing a few laps of the park for him to sniff and mark his visit.....

Saturday.

The plan, such as it was, was to get out and walk into the nearby beach area. On the site map it showed an exit where the boat slipway into the creek was, then right past where we had gone the evening before. Next to our park is another one with large bungalow style cabins. They looked really nice, the front row bungalows have a view across the creek. The path was a little uneven here. Reggie had already decided that walking to the beach wasn't on his agenda and he took the opportunity to slip into the water.

When he climbed out he turned back the way we came! In the end our wills persevered over his! We ended up on a few streets and then came to the beach. Here we found the Hayling Railway. A light railway that seemed to have a small diesel engine pulling the train.

We took some photos and I had the Nikon D50 with me.It was quite warm and we didn't want Reggie out too long in the heat.

Off to the west you could see Portsmouth and the Spinnaker Tower. The Nikon was at full focal length to get this picture!

Claire bought water and we headed back to the site. We checked the cafes but by now they had all filled up. We decided to go back the way we came and have a coffee or lunch at the van.

Then we came across the problem. The path alongside the creek was under water. The tide was coming in when we set off, but was now right up over the path almost to the fence by the bungalows. Impassable.

So Google Maps guided us back on the roads around the bungalow park to the main entrance to our park. Rather lazily we stopped off in the restaurant and bought a baguette and a coffee each.

Later on we had a walk via the slipway to the other direction. The tide had turned and it was almost empty again. A narrow rivulet in the middle was occupied by the seabirds picking through the mud. The swans congregated in what was left of the water and a white heron looked for food.

Dinner was a couple of ready meals that we had bought in Waitrose on Friday.

Sunday.

Overnight the forecast was for rain and even thunderstorms. Luckily it was wrong and we had rain but not until about 2am. Reggie's restlessness again meant several laps for a series of "last pees" before he settled down until about 7am.

A bit more rain as we were having breakfast and the beginning of the chores we needed to do before setting off. We have to drain the grey water and this meant a round trip out of the park and back in as both service points are just after the entrance. I did the toilet cassette first. There are plenty of Elsan points to do that. Not the nicest job but essential. No one wants to leave the cassette to "age" in the van!

As it had rained the new Taylormade screen cover needed shaking and it was put in the shower so that when it drained off the water would run into the shower drains. Everything was done and amazingly for us it was before 10am when we set off.

The route back was going to be the motorway route we didn't take on Friday! The A27 for a short distance towards Portsmouth, then A3 all the way to the M25. There were roadworks eastbound on the A27 but the hold up was only minutes for us. We had pretty much an easy drive stopping only at the M25 services at Cobham. Coffee from McDonalds. A McCafe is cheaper than the other coffee places and is, in my opinion, as good. The holdup getting through the roadworks at the A3/M25 junction wasn't too bad. Once on the M25 eastbound, the queues on the other side were horrendous. Stretching back four or five miles!

We had been lucky with the weather. It was only after we had emptied the van that it started to rain. Some jobs still need doing. I didn't put any cleaning tabs int he cassette so that needs doing once it stops raining here at home.

All in all a really nice weekend away. Not a lot planned and the weather was okay most of the time.

It seems like weeks if not months since we last went away in Molly the Moho.

Our last couple of trips have been cancelled either by the weather or by Claire's emergency dental appointments.

We are still out of pocket after giving Nelson's Patch plenty of notice that we couldn't make it. As their park wasn't full it wasn't as if they couldn't have let us change the booking until this coming weekend. Instead, they didn't bother to even acknowledge my emails. So in future they can get stuffed.

So where to go. We have left it a little late as we still have the ongoing saga with Claire's dental appointments. I locked around on the various camping websites and there wasn't much that caught my attention. In the end I discounted the Caravan Club sites, not where I wanted to go and the costs seem to grow to be nothing like the "from" price you start with.

In the end I had a look at "Premier Parks" and chose a large site in Hampshire. It's about a two hour drive from home depending on the route we take. So I booked two nights from Friday to Sunday. We can pick up Molly from storage tomorrow and get everything ready to leave around noon (or so) on Friday.

I had looked at a few sites we like on Mersea Island, but they only had grass pitches available and there's the added hassle of the (terrible) Dartford Crossing and also the continuing roadworks on the A12.

So that's the plan. The site we have picked is by the sea and the creek that runs between Eastney (Portsmouth) and Hayling Island.

We had just packed up the van and were just having lunch before setting off when we saw on Facebook and then an email came through that the event was cancelled!

There was always this chance after the torrential rain we had had in the south-east over the last few days.

Yesterday though, we both thought little of it and if it was cancelled, so be it. We would simply let the tickets roll over to June when the next summer event was on. That was one of the options we were given.

Then today, after loading the van with everything we'd need except for us and Reggie, we saw the notices. Bugger.

Loaded up and nowhere to go!

Molly unloaded. Camping "treat" crumpets out and in the toaster!

Typical.

With a weekend away on grass at the "Campers and Coffee Rally" coming up in a few days.... the weather has turned and we have torrential rain coming from the north-east.

We have had sunny conditions for a few weeks but this week it's lashing down! What luck!

Hopefully the organisers will have a tractor on call if anyone gets stuck in the mud!

Last year's video.

A little more planning this evening for the second day we are in France. We will overnight at the CCP aire at Formerie and the plan is to head almost due south to the CCP aire at Beaulieu-sur-Loire. Sadly, Paris site in the way!

Leaving it to Google Maps and TomTom of course comes up with several different routes. One that goes into Paris and on the périphérique (shudder the thought!) and others that bypass Paris to the east and the west.

I decided that as we have "done" the east side so many times, maybe the west ought to be given a chance.

Ticking the boxes in both apps to "avoid tolls" came to one route! No doubt when it gets onto "Max" it will all change.

So the attached screenshot is the proposed route for Day 2.

During the wee small hours whilst I am trying to go to sleep, my brain keeps thinking about the route to Alcoceber and the stops to make on the way.

On the way from Calais we are already booked into the Camping-Car Park (CCP) aire at Formerie. That's a given. It's after there that I keep having this recurring nightmare that to avoid going the same way (again!) that we have done before that we will end up in the centre of Paris!

It's irrational but can you even imagine taking a 7.02m motorhome into Paris. *Shudder*

I am pretty convinced that the second overnight will be at the CCP aire at Beaulieu-sur-Loire. Trying to find it on Google Maps shows the road number that CCP provide is different and it's still called by it's old name Camping Touristique du Canal. It does say it is managed by CCP. Taking the route that TomTom Max likes would take us to the east of Paris on the outer périphérique and then via Melun and Fontainebleau and then the N7, in its many departmental guises, and finally the A77.A total of 188 miles. I plan in miles despite France being metric and distances being in kilometres.

It's the next day that I am having a problem with. I had originally thought that the CCP aire Brassac-les-Mines would be ideal. My earlier planning is always based on stopping at St Cyprien Plage at Le Flot Bleu on the 4th and last overnight before heading to Alcoceber on the Saturday morning.

Brassac-les-Mines would be mostly motorway with the toll free A77 giving way to the toll free A75 and around 180 miles from Beaulieu.

I have been looking at some other CCP aires at Massiac and Saint-Flour. These would add around 17 miles and 36 miles respectively to the day's mileage. Given the autoroute travel, it's seems ultimately doable. Probably 210 miles for the day maximum.

If we choose to spend €16.30 and stay on the A75 over the Millau Viaduct, then cost goes up and mileage goes down a little. It would mean of course, once at Beziers we need to avoid the expensive toll A9! The mileage for the day would be something like 220 miles. Not too bad considering the distances on the autoroutes.

I have formulated a rough plan for the outward journey that has us stopping in three Camping-Car Park (CCP) aires on the way to Alcoceber.

We could stay at free aires rather than spend between €10 and €15 a night, but we should be guaranteed an electrical hook-up and some sites are municipal campsites that have joined the CCP system and have loos as well.

We have already booked the first night away at the CCP site at Formerie. This is far enough to drive on the first day after getting off the boat at Calais around 1pm and then going to do some shopping for us and Reggie. It's only about 115kms from Calais and we are travelling on a Tuesday and there are no school holidays!

Day 2 is a little more complex.  Paris sits like a huge spider in its web, and getting past it can mean large detours. Usually, we head towards Rouen from Formerie and then from there head south taking in Chartres and along the N10 route towards Tours, Poitiers and Bordeaux.

This time I decided to let TomTom Planner on the laptop decide the route with the emphasis on no tolls.  It does indeed take us towards Paris and then around it on the outer ring roads.

Even though we have the crit'air sticker for France, I'd hate to drive a 7m van any nearer the centre.

At the moment I am looking at Beaulieu sur Loire CCP for the next overnight stop. The site is a former municipal campsite and does have loos and showers available until mid-October. It's around 185 miles on the day.

Day 3 and we should go a lot further on the toll-free A77.  We use toll motorways when we really need to, but why pay when you can go for free? I am looking at the Brassac les Mines CCP. We are looking at the same sort of distance again today.  Rather than thrash along we can take our time and see something along the way.

Once off the A77 we have some local former N roads and then the A75. South of Clermont this is toll free as far as Beziers and the A9 junction. Brassac is an expensive €15 a night. This is open to change and with a lot of the day in non toll autoroutes we could go further and cut down the next day's mileage...

The last overnight at the end of Day 4 I am aiming for is the Flot Bleu Aire at Saint-Cyprien Plage on the Mediterranean coast. We have stayed before in 2022 and it was nice but a little packed in November. Hopefully not packed in October!   I do have a couple of CCP aires as backup. From the reviews it seems that people moan about anything and everything!  We had no problems there.  It's an aire and there isn't supposed to be camping behaviour i.e. awnings and tables and chairs etc! This is a slightly longer day, around 220 miles and I might scrub this one and go for one of the CCP options in the area.

Day 5 we set off for Alcoceber and the week in the apartment.

(This was posted from Yahoo Mail - no paragraphing on arrival in Travellerspoint!!!)

(Edited to add paragraphs - 15th August)

I have had a few days off from planning this trip as there were other things to look into. The rear bumper fix for Molly being one of them - more on that elsewhere on this blog.

So whilst I was playing with Max (the TomTom Go Camper Max satnav/GPS) I decided to let her/him/they calculate a return journey from Alcoceber/Alcossebre with the dimensions slightly altered to make the van wider.

If you have read the earlier blog about the journey to Invicta Caravan Services you will get an idea how even the best laid plans can be ruined by Google having the wrong information in their Maps application!

Also the roads chosen by TomTom were too narrow for Molly to pass trucks and buses safely without one (usually me as truck drivers know that their size and weight always wins!) of us diving to the left to avoid contact. A problem I need to address and quickly.

On the summer trip in May we started coming north from Valencia. This time Alcoceber is around 110kms to the north of Valencia. The route though looks pretty much like the one we did on the way back in May. The non-toll route goes over the Somport crossing and maybe this time we will stay on the aire at Canfranc Station.

We have five nights to travel along this route or one very much like it. On one of the days we need to fit in a vet's visit to get Reggie his worming and passport filled in. I am thinking a Cavignac for that. We have been there before and the village has a free aire about a kilometre from the vet's surgery. Something to consider.

This is a work in progress... I'll work on this as we get nearer to the date we leave.

This is part of the route as far as Cavignac and the vet's office.

One of the successes of having Max is that it is larger than the Ohrex. It's updated by WiFi at home and also gets traffic updates by being Bluetooth tethered to my phone. I just have to remember to turn that on when I switch my phone on. If anyone knows how to make it automatic on an Android phone then let me know! I turn my phone off at night and back on again in the morning. In case of an emergency we still have the landline at home....

Another success is that TomTom Plans syncs with the unit across the wifi and bluetooth connection. So I can plan something and send it to Max.

... and back.

The first part of this blog was written on Thursday and then left as a draft so that today, when I got back from collecting Molly I could upload in one blog!

Thursday 8th August

To get Molly up to Staplehurst for a 9am arrival meant leaving home around 8am. It's merely 40 miles max but it would be during the morning rush hour. With the M20 currently deployed as a contraflow, called Operation Brock, and a reduced speed limit, I let Max (Satnav!) choose a non motorway route. Not a non-toll as there aren't any toll motorways around here.

The route on paper and on screen didn't look too bad. It was terrible!

Once off the A20 after Ashford the route to Pluckley and Headcorn was on shitty little roads. At one point I had to avoid a lump of tree hanging onto the road. It was around a blind bend and luckily nothing came the other way. Car drivers that have no idea which side of the painted centre line they are supposed to be on!

Once in Staplehurst Max took us to where Google thinks Invicta Caravans actually are. They aren't. It shows them in the middle of a lane when in fact they are right at the end. As we crawled along, Claire following in the car, I overshot the real entrance. That's when I backed into a road sign trying to turn around a 7 metre van on a 7 metre road! And broke even more of the nearside (left) bumper off. So much that the light block was hanging down. I taped it up.

This meant that of course, the job was bigger than estimated originally. That means it is more expensive.

🤬🤬🤬

Cathy let us in and we surveyed the extra damage. She assured us that it was fixable. So off we went in the car towards Maidstone, forgetting the M20 is closed for the above mentioned Brock! We had to take the A20 back to Ashford before joining the M20 after Brock ended. We were in no hurry.

Saturday 10th August

To save me driving to Invicta Caravans and Claire driving back I checked that I could get the train to Staplehurst and Cathy would pick me up. I needed to get the 8.46am train from Sandling, the nearest station to Hythe, and it would be four stops on the "slow" line towards London. The timetable says 32 minutes. Claire dropped me off and as a miracle occasionally happens the train arrived on time. And, there were seats vacant! That cost me the princely sum of £10.30! Gulp.

Cathy was there to meet me as it wheezed into the station at the scheduled 9.18am. Of that journey 8 minutes was used up when they joined our train to the back of another that was waiting at Ashford!

Overnight I hadn't slept all that well. There was always the niggle in the back of my mind that repairing rather than replacing the broken parts might not be the best solution. In the end I needn't have worried.

The job is exceptional. You would never notice that anything had been done at all to the original. It was pieced together and plastic welded and then a gel coat put on it then painted and the seals redone to stop water getting in.

It certainly wasn't cheap, but I guess having a real artist work on it was worth it.

The other jobs that needed doing haven't been done as the extra time to put right the extra damage meant they ran out of time. I had offered to leave it there but they are fully booked up and booking jobs in three weeks ahead! Cathy is going to sort the part needed for the Truma BBQ point. It looks as though the whole surrounding thing needs replacing so she will order that on Monday. They will do the fresh water drain at the same time as I have the tap already. So more expense! She suggested August 27th as a possible date and they will come to us at home. Now to wait until Monday 12th for confirmation.

For the drive home I used MyRouteApp with vehicle set to Motorhome to create a route back home that avoided Maidstone, the M20 and of course the accursed BROCK! That went into https://plan.tomtom.com/en/ and synced to Max. I had to make a change as part of the route that Max made was different. I wanted to stay on roads wide enough to pass oncoming trucks and buses without diving for the left of the road!

Why the heck didn't TomTom choose my route? It was 2kms shorter and didn't involve any shitty little roads. I was back home in about an hour. No narrow roads! No brushing the left mirror into roadside bushes! No stress!

So here we are. All fixed and our bank accounts are a little more empty.

So with one overnight stopover fixed and booked I am looking at the maps to see if there are places to visit as we travel pretty much due south from Formerie, around Paris and then right through the middle of France.

My "go to" website is "Les Plus Beaux Villages de France". For some reason today the English page isn't working and Google isn't translating the French page for me. So I will have to resort to the schoolboy level French that I stopped learning officially in 1973.

The route after circumnavigating Paris takes us to the A77 toll-free motorway. The day will be about 196 miles to my (possible) stop at Bonny-sur-Loire. For normal people that is about 3 hours or so, but In a motorhome with a dog it's around 4 hours. Or longer.

The Beaux Villages are scattered across France. The latest map I could find shows that the north is pretty poor. This is probably because two world wars were fought across Normandy and what are now Somme and Pas-de-Calais Nord.

It looks for that day we will be unlucky with a Beau Village as the first village on the route is Sancerre and a short hike off the A77. Looking on Search4sites there seems to very little parking but one parking does have two camping-car spaces. That one will go in the book, yes a real notepad, as a maybe.

A better option is a little further south and that's Apremont-sur-Allier. Looks a nice little village with a castle, and it will be about lunch time when we arrive. They have a large camping-car parking place near the old town. I have added that one to the TomTom route.

Once we get onto the A75 below Clermont Ferrand we enter the area where we have been to most of them already! So Beaux Villages..... Next time maybe! That's probably not a bad thing as it is a long run on the motorways to St Cyprien.

I am still planning the Awaycation to France and Spain for this Autumn! So this is just an idea at the moment!

As I was toying with the online route planner for the TomTom GO Camper Max aka Max (https://plan.tomtom.com/) for this trip, I picked up a GPX file I have of the Romantic Road in Germany.

I found the GPX file online before we went to the Czech Invader Rally in 2022 and used part of it for the return journey on the bikes. Only part of it though.

The online planner will also import GPX files as well as plan your own route from scratch. I did a bit of bodging using the map from Wikipedia to check that the GPX covered all bases. It didn't and I have to add a few.

Link to Wiki map

To set a start point I had to reverse the route in MyRouteApp and create a new view of the Romantic Route from north to south. Starting in Wurzburg and ending in Fussen - excuse the lack of accented letters, this keyboard doesn't do them! The start point is Calais.

This produced the following route:

As I said it's only a thought at the moment, and making the routes in MyRouteApp and TomTom Planner was good practice!

Another factor is that we still have the timeshare week we can use. There aren't that many dog friendly places in Germany and Austria.

There may be more opportunities in Hungary. There are always a lot around Lake Balaton. I have been to Hungary a few times. Mostly on the motorcycle though, although we did one trip in a hired Czech registered Škoda Favorit estate.

We have stayed at Nelson's Patch before and when I was looking for a weekend away at the end of the school holidays I thought it would be nice to go again.

Two nights and hopefully the weather will be better and we can take a walk to the coast and maybe to Happisburgh and see the lighthouse and the beach.

Last time we had a walk locally but Reggie wasn't too enthusiastic as the road past the entrance to the site doesn't have a decent path, and the traffic was flying past. Hopefully, the pub right next door will be open this time as we will be there Friday and Saturday evenings!