London to France and Italy

Weds 9th November - We left at 5:30 a.m, a day later than planned, but this isn’t such a surprise for me and meant we left not in quite such a panic. I was able to watch Spurs on Monday, although not such a great result, plant those daffodils I’d never quite got round too, set up my hotmail account and we enjoyed a last night curry with John’s brothers, Ann, Scott and Judy. We got to the ferry, Dover with a good 15/20 minutes to spare which was quite a novelty. Took the classic picture of the white cliffs of Dover and gave my Grandad a quick call. But he was dashing out the door to play bowls with the lad down the road, even though it was only 8:30.
Once in France we made steady progress along the empty toll roads past the numerous piles of sugar beat. We arrived at Kathy and Steve’s place in the Loraine region by evening. Enjoyed an evening meal - a raclette – never seen these before, but involves a cooker on the table, cooking cheeses in little trays with veggies frying on top. Also enjoyed plenty of red wine as thought this may be one of the last chances. But this seems to be an emerging pattern over the last few weeks and maybe a detox is much needed.
The next day was pretty lazy for me, just a trip to the Carrefour with the task of getting what we would need for the next four months that wouldn’t be easy to get in Africa. And we couldn’t really be sure what that was. John picked up lots of different oils for oil changes.
Friday 11th November we packed up before 9:00 for the journey through France to Italy. We squeezed the duvet into the roof top tent which was quite painful on the hands as there was ice on top of the tent. We then took a few leaving photos with Dillon and George and set off.
The route along the valley to Italy was quite impressive with the sun setting on the limestone mountains and autumn coloured trees. The tolls were beginning to mount up and the nearly 13 km tunnel to Italy was about 30Euros. It was dark by the time we got through to Italy, but we immediately knew we were there by the driving as a couple of cars tried to cut us up as the lanes narrowed to one. We spent the night outside of Turin in a non-descript town of Rivioli.