.”You’ll be in France when you get on that ferry”. He was almost right and probably should have added a final “terminal”.

We’ve been on the southern English coast looking after a couple of highly opinionated dachshunds for two weeks, and having made the effort to travel the near length of the UK from another house-sit in Inverness, it seems profligate to waste all that effort. Europe is just across the water.

Time to start collecting ferry crossings, so we turn right and head for the ferry. The five minute crossing off of Hayling Island; best to start small and build from there. Thence to something bigger in Portsmouth.

Through the air-lock of the terminal’s check-in hall and into France. A coachload of sixth-year students managing to occupy all two hundred seats and all the auditory volume. I suspect that any congregation of a nation’s youth playing ‘snap’ could achieve such reverberations, so that doesn’t mark them as French. Non. It’s the complete absence of obesity. We’re in France.

Now booked onto the overnight crossing to Caen, first to visit my cousin and then…… we have no agenda, but we do have our two folding bicycles with us.