We left Portugal on the Saturday and made our way back home. We tried a slightly different schedule this time to see if it was any better, instead of getting up and getting on the road by 5:00am each day and having the overnight in Bordeaux, we tried leaving around 9:00am and stopping in Bayonne overnight, arriving around 6:00pm and then leaving again around 9:00am after a good breakfast, have a leisurely drive up to Dieppe aiming to get there sometime in the evening and then use the 5:30am Ferry.
This worked extremely well, both days was far more easily paced, we were able to stop for a long lunch in Poitiers along with keeping the speed down a little from the maximum, thus making the fuel more economic. Teresa also took on a lot more of the driving on the way back, which was generally good all around.
The big negative to this schedule was the fact that we got to Dieppe at around 8:00pm and the ferry wasn’t until 5:30am the next morning, it was a very long and boring night. It was however a beautiful evening and we enjoyed a lovely walk along the Dieppe seafront.
Would we do it again? Don’t know at this point I would say no, but a saving on fuel and saving over £110 on the ferry might persuade me again, maybe just not leave Bayonne at 9:00am maybe 10:00am instead.
On a real positive, we received a email from Paulo (Project Manager) on the Tuesday, complete with pictures to show that the builders were very much back on site and as you can see, well just about as the quality of the pictures this time are not so good, they were shifting large quantities of soil around to get the site levelled. So action again at last, let’s hope it continues, although I suspect we will be continually chasing all the way through the project.
