Dakar Challenge – London to Dover, Calais to Paris

So, here I was, having dropped my girlfriend off at work (what with it being a friday), a large bag packed with what I hope to be enough clothes and bits and pieces to last me two weeks through a couple of climate zones, feeling a bit nervous.

Kostas (my greek co-driver/co-nutcase) was arriving by tube to Gants Hill around 9:30am and after some confusion (caused by the fact that Gants Hill tube station has 1 million exits and no decent signage) we were back at mine, all packed loaded and ready to go in the our £500 4×4.

Our ferry to Calais was booked for 13:15 so we headed off down the A13 towards Dartford, however once we got over the bridge I started seeing warnings that Operation Stack was in operation.  As such we had to take a bit of a detour and I started to get a bit worried that we’d miss our ferry, so cue some harried driving and slight diversions, but it all worked out in the end and we arrived in Dover.

Queuing up to get on board our ferry, we got some attention with people asking where the hell we were going with pictures of camels and the Eiffel Tower stuck on the side of our CRV, after explaining that we were driving down to the Sahara most people thought we were a little mad.

The ferry to Calais didn’t take too long, just enough for extortionate lunch to be obtained, at which point I realised I had no Euros.  Note to self, get some Euros.

The few times I’ve gone to Calais by car I’ve always liked how massive the signs are and how many of them are around purely to remind silly english drivers that you suddenly have to drive on the other side of the road, all the exits are in fact designed that you can’t do anything but go the right way, or at least you’d have to try quite hard to cause mischief.

It was then quite a boring drive down to Paris, stopping at a couple of Aire de Service on the way – which incidentally are generally excellent and not the horrors that are UK service stations.  All the ones we stopped at were lovely, clean, well maintained and served excellent coffee, something essential when travelling with a Kostas.  Additionally they all seem to be staffed by terribly pretty french girls which can be rather distracting.

The trip towards Paris was uneventful, save for the bit where we hit Paris itself – I thought London traffic was bad but as we were staying at Cité Universitaire this meant we had to hit the Peripherique, unfortunately at rush hour.

This was pretty much gridlock and we were very low on fuel which made matters a bit tricky.

Anyway, despite this we ended up parking under Stade Charlety which is the current home of Paris St. Germain.

We met up with Kostas friend and crashed on his floor, after popping into town and having some nice food and some beers.

So, we were in Paris, the trip had begun and we were off to Africa, what would tomorrow bring?

Notes and Points

  • Never trust the M25/M20 to Dover and plan ahead – bizarrely something I always do normally but didn’t do this time!
  • Get Euros in advance otherwise you’ll get scalped on the rate on the ferry
  • Enjoy the coffee and marvel at the french motorway system
  • Avoid the Peripherique in Paris, in fact, never drive in Paris

Route


home to dover

calais paris

Jason Gilbert Written by:

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.