Our journey north from La Rochelle was fairly uneventful with a lovely overnight stop in Rennes for a last meal out of the trip and a few pints of Breton Ale! Although we didn't meet any snow until the last 100km of the Journey to Cherbourg the weather was very cold and all the water taps at camperstops were frozen solid, sightly limiting our options for places to stay. In fact in Rennes we had to wait a couple of hours for the campsite to open up so we could top up our tanks from the only outside tap they had working, which had been firmly insulated with a foam filled bin bag when not in use. We have certainly put the van through its paces on this trip, our lowest temperature last week being about -3, compared to the nearly 40degree heat we were experiencing in Hungary. The heating has done a fab job and we were nice and toasty all the way.
On Tuesday we left Rennes and started heading further north. As the weather forecast was for the snow to come in again badly across France in the afternoon we decided to get as close to our ferry port as possible even though we would then have a few days to kill. We had a fairly tricky drive on dual carriageways reduced to only one lane by the snow (they have a serious shortage of salt in France) and arrived in Cherbourg early afternoon. We had planned to spend a few days on the beaches on the Normandy peninsular but as we were likely to get snowed in we decided against that and changed the ferry booking to leave France on Tuesday night on the night crossing. About 3 the snow started coming down hard so we parked up on the docks and settled in for a long wait in the snow. There was absolutely no onearound and we got slowly more covered in snow (picture). Miraculously the ferry did actually run, with just three cars in the hold! and much to our surprise we found ourselves back in the UK yesterday morning, slightly confused at being here early and driving through yet more snow whilst chanting "drive on the left, drive on the left"
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