Europe, 1969 |
 Day 53 (6 November 1969) – CALAIS: The youth hostel we had tried to get into at Chateaudun, fairly near Chartres, was a pigsty, so we then tried to get into a couple of inexpensive hotels in Chartres, but there was no room in either inn. As a result, we made a snap decision: we’d drive on through the night to Calais. We left Chartres at 6:30 pm. By midnight we were just south of Abbeville, and at 2:30 am (exactly eight hours after leaving Chartres) we reached Calais. We parked on the dockside and, to quote my diary, “all things considered – e.g., the cramped space, the cold, and the self-creating waterfall of condensation in the back of the van – we slept fairly well.” I took this photograph in the early morning, shortly after sunrise, and our Austin Mini Minor van is nearest the camera. We caught the 12 noon ferry, and by 2:00 pm we were in Dover. Our 53-day, 5,000-mile, £150 continental sojourn was over. (This is the last picture in this album.) |