While getting ready to drive down through France to Spain on the Saturday 19th December 2020 / Sunday 20th December 2020 it was announced that London was going into Tier 4 at midnight Saturday night and travel not advised. We had a PCR and were leaving anyway, so when to book the Eurotunnel at the last minute (before leaving) and there was just one slot left, however with Flexiplus you have 24 hour flexibility, so we got in the Defender as soon as the panic shopping traffic died down and made it across before midnight.
The next day we saw nobody else seemed to care and were still trying to cross and exit London by any means possible, but this was blocked by midnight French time on the Sunday, so the last Eurotunnel was 9:30pm…
Leaving when still allowed and as planned, we still passed miles / kilometres of Lorries / trucks waiting to cross, many of whom we do not know if they made it or spent Christmas there?
However, having planned this ahead, taken 24 hour PCR tests on the Friday and travelling with known negative results, on the contactless Eurotunnel and sure we could cross at a time nobody wants to cross and avoiding the crowds we set-off.
The hotel looks a lot more than it is, its an old chateaux run by best western and is a very nice place to stay and with rooms as reasonable or more than the usual hotels, however during these times I try and avoid the big motorway chains and pay extra in the hope its less busy, better aired and cleaned, as well, let’s just say a lot of the rooms in boats and hotels that claim to be extra cleaned and deep cleaned for covid, don’t pass the wipe test: if you can wipe a cleaning towel over a key surface and it’s cleaning then… it’s not so deep clean if you know what I mean… just don’t do that to the Defender lol.
I was not sure of we could drive through Lockdown France, which since the 15th December had a curfew from 8pm to 6am, so we had planned to stay in an easy distance to reach with plenty of time before then, and checked in advance that we would be served food (dinner at least) in our rooms.
Lunch was a different matter and was down to motorway service stations.
I took my 3T Exploro (which was not used so far due to rain) and some other parts to fit to the Land Rover, which have now done this route a few times but still not fitted!
This is a the third of these videos but the first to be published as was the easiest to edit thanks to the Nextbase 622GW 4k Dashcam (and the Nikon z50 and iPhone 11 pro) and a bit of planning, but there will be more as I use the Defender to haul my bikes to adventures again hopefully in 2021, and hopefully as I am now, without huge border fusses, international driving licences, huge customs queues or border checks post brexit.
So if you like Defenders, bikes, wine, adventure and some tech along the way be sure to subscribe and all that, as my videos sadly still come out in fits and bursts…
Happy new year!