Thursday 27th December

And as you read this we will be racing down the A roads of France heading for Rouen, so as to avoid Paris and the dreaded Peripherique which can resemble a car-park when luck is against you.  Then we head south towards Le Mans and Bordeaux.

I don’t actually look forward to the journey but the destination makes it worth it.  As Harry Chapin once sang “It’s got to be the going, not the getting there that’s good.”   He was singing about travelling around America  on Greyhound buses in the sixties,  but the sentiment is the same.  As a passenger all you can do is stare out at the road unwinding in front of you; at least the driver has something to do, deciding which lane to move into, and when to overtake that Spanish Juggernaut in the slow lane.

At least with the dogs on board there are plenty of stops, and as soon as we change gear and the indicator sounds both dogs wake up and start panting and jumping around.

The weather is likely to be wet most of the way, but mild too.  We drove to France three years ago in the winter, and there was quite a lot of snow and ice, which wasn’t much fun.  That was only to Le Touquet on the North coast so there was far less driving that time.

So here we go again, for the last time in 2012 – on the road again.