Easter Adventure days 3 & 4

OK, so it hadn't been what I'd hoped for, lots of crawling around medieval ruins and imagining "Knights in white satin, never reaching the end". Instead, lots of wind and rain.

I will say Calais is much different than Paris. I found most of the people generally nice and helpful, and willing to speak English. Several of them were actually very nice. Overall, I found the cultural experience to be rather positive. Hey, remember, it's an adventure. These are the parts that make it good!

So Sunday I'm up bright and early, check out and get a taxi to the port. Pig Pen singing "Let me jump on your wagon and ride..." None of the customer service numbers for the ferry companies work as it's a weekend (BTW, it seems a matter of pride here that customer service numbers go to UK or French call centers, of course, that means they all work UK and French hours!)

Anyway, the wind has stopped, the ferries are running and I can get on the (:45 ferry. Life is good. The French port is better equipped than the British one, so I grab a coffee and croissant and wait for my ferry.

Interestingly, the French side has a security check point, much like you see at airports. for boarding the ferry. The Brits don't have this. Also, the British immigration officers love to talk to you, so after getting my passport stamped, I'm in a conversation with the guy about weather and crossing the channel. I think these guys live in the UK and cross for their job. Interesting commute.

Anyway, the ferry crossing back is a piece of cake. Smooth, flat channel, empty boat. I make friends with a Canadian couple heading to see their kids (adults) in the UK. A pic of the white cliffs of Dover from the ferry coming back. Oh, BTW, if that looks like a snowstorm, it is.



Ferry lands, we get on the little bus for the terminal and Buddy guy is screaming "Somebody's been sleeping in my bed, and you know that's a terrible thing to say"

Get to the terminal, I gotta pee, hit the head, come walking out through customs (there was none of this BS in France when landing) and Warren Haynes is screaming "And you still don't understand Why they hate you, Mr. Man"
and as the doors open, there's 12 cops standing there. One immediately walks up to me and motions for me to step aside.

Now, I'm a 47 year old white guy, with nothing but a backpack. They were either profiling someone or were bored. I've seen bored cops, these weren't them! I assume they were stopping everyone driving down that sidewalk that day!

Anyway, he had 40 questions about where I'd been and what I'd done. Told him that mainly I'd ended up hiding from the wind and rain. He asked me for a receipt for my lodging and i told him it was in my backpack somewhere, but I'd need to dump the whole thing and search every pocket to find it, but I'd gladly do that for him. Suddenly he was a fine feller and started joking about the weather.

I gotta say, that was the one point in the adventure that irritated me. Really don't think I deserved that level of harassment.

Again, I decided to walk from the ferry port to the train station, as now I knew the way. It was snowing like mad!

Now, I get to the train station and there's no trains. Engineering works on the tracks. You have to take a bus replacement service to Ashford. the name meant as much to me as it probably does to you, so I hop on a bus. Cream playing "That same thing..."

Of course, what I don't realize is that this bus is now a local train, and will stop 12 friggin times before it gets to Ashford, and it takes an hour and a half. This was a 2 hour train ride down, now working on 4 hours back.

Got home it was still snowing, though not overly hard. Here's a couple of pics where I tried to catch it. You may have to look full size to see the snow.



Somewhere in this process I got one of those chills you just can't get rid of. When I finally got home about 4:00 pm, I turned the heat up in the house and sat here in my coat and hat for a good 30 minutes until I began gradually peeling outer layers off. It was about 6:30 before I got reasonably warm!

So it was an adventure. Not one I want to repeat, but not one I regret taking. Some good things, would have been better with better weather, but who woulda thunk it would snow for the first time in 2 years here on Easter weekend?

One final note on the pics, Google Photos has a capability to link photo locations to Google maps and Google Earth. You can follow that here or from any of the photo links