Our First Road Trip Across the Channel
What it was like crossing the English Channel and driving our van around Europe for the first time. In this blog, I’ll share my thoughts and feelings as a first-time driver on the mainland as well as some hints and tips for how to best get around.
Before we went, I was a nervous wreck! I’ve been confidently driving since I was 17 and I absolutely love being on the road, but this was a brand new challenge for me. I was going to have to safely transport me, Tor, and our 20-year-old Transit van across France, Spain and Portugal, and back again, while both of us held down full-time jobs and therefore ensuring enough power and WiFi wherever we parked. There was a lot on my mind. Not to mention the fact we were on the other side of the road, and the only roads I’d ever experienced in France were from trips to Paris - and those flashbacks didn’t fill me with much confidence.
Anyway, the time had come - 18th February 2023 - we were going to be catching the night ferry from Newhaven, just outside of Brighton, to Dieppe in France. We parked up beside Brighton Pier, slept there the night before the ferry, and worked from there the next day. Writing this, Tora just reminded me that I had so much nervous energy that day, I made them go out and wash the van because I couldn’t cope with the thought of turning up to France in a filthy van - fair enough, I think!! (Note: I’m not actually a princess - I’d have done it myself, but Tora had been threatening to do it for weeks and still wanted to do it - not wanting to step on anyone’s toes, I kindly pushed them that cold, dark evening to finally get it done).
After work, we had some dinner in town, I dosed up on seasickness tablets, then finally set off for the dreaded ferry. In typical Jess-fashion, we got there far too early, which meant we just had to sit nervously for longer in the queue before boarding. It felt like forever. But eventually, we got on, parked up in the sardine tin-like car park and headed up to the lounge area. The lounge was set out like a cinema with rows and rows of seats, only this one didn’t have a screen… or popcorn. It was far from comfortable, and I resorted to lying under a table in the café on the hard, wooden floor, where remarkably I managed to get a couple of hours sleep. Next time, we’ll pay for a room.
It was time to disembark and be thrust into the wild roads of France, or so I thought. Much to my delight, the roads were absolutely dead because it was 6am, and I had plenty of time to get used to driving on the right-hand side of the road. About an hour into the drive, we decided to stop at a supermarket in Rives-en-Seine to pick up some groceries but it was shut when we got there - classic. Knackered from the lack of sleep, and stress of the night before, we climbed over all of our stuff (bikes included), and went for a lie down - perks of driving with your bedroom attached to you! We didn’t wake up until 10am and all the locals were pushing their shopping trolleys around the car park, going about their day-to-day lives. Thank God for tinted windows!
Our first stop was Tours, which is about 230 miles from Dieppe, where we got off the ferry. The reason we stopped in Rives-en-Seine was due to the low emission zone in Rouen, which would be part of the route had we not added the extra stop. Given that we already had to go out of our way to avoid the low emission zone, we decided to just use the motorway and get to Tours as quickly as possible. BIG MISTAKE. After only a few hours driving, we were down £70 in toll road charges. From that day on, we always used the ‘Avoid Motorways’ filter on Google Maps, no matter how much time it added to the jaunt.
We’d booked a campsite for the first three nights to give ourselves time to take stock of where we were, fill up on water and groceries, etc. explore our first city and plan our next few stops. It was made abundantly clear to us that it was off-season, when we were greeted by an empty reception, locked loos and some rogue people who seemed to be living on the campsite in static caravans, and didn’t exactly give us a warm welcome. More, a curious stare as if to say “What are you doing here?... On a campsite… in your campervan…” We finally made contact with the owners anyway, and were given our spot with electric hookup and a water point. We were happy enough with this, as we just wanted to unpack the van and settle into vanlife.
After staying in a few different parkups, that we found using the Park4Night app, we realised it’s actually pointless staying in campsites in France unless you really need to. France is absolutely built for vanlifers, and has all the amenities you should need while living your life on the road. If you don’t need any amenities, then even better! You have ample places set out in nature to just pull up and live your best life.
Off-grid living without pesky council workers moving you on
As we drove more over the next few days, I was put at ease by the calmness of the roads in France, especially as we were now avoiding motorways! We cruised through beautiful countryside filled with vineyards, farms and many historical Châteaus. Even the towns and small cities were pretty calm, and I’d already forgotten about the fact we were on the other side of the road. Roundabouts weren’t phasing me either, like I thought they would. It just felt normal after the first day or two. All that worrying for nothing!
Another great thing was that the roads were absolutely pothole-free and very wide, unlike back in England, and they just felt so smooth and easy to drive on as we weaved our way around the winding roads. I imagined, like in England, when you enable the ‘Avoid Motorways’ option on Google Maps, you’re definitely going to go off the beaten track, and end up on the most narrow, bumpy, sorry excuses for roads that Google Maps can possibly find. I was imagining the Cornish countryside where you have to reverse a good 5 miles if there’s a tractor coming at you head-on, just to find a place to pull over into, while beads of sweat drip unrelentingly down your forehead.
I mentioned earlier that we had to avoid Rouen because of the low emission zone. These are quite common in Cities in France, and they’re creeping their way into the UK more and more, too. They’re basically the government’s way of “giving a shit about the environment” while profiting heavily… of course. Your vehicle is rated based on the CO2 emissions it pumps out, and if it falls below a certain rating, then you’re going to have your travels disrupted. Whether that be you have to pay every time you enter a low emission zone, or you’re simply not allowed to enter it, you’ll be impacted. Our honky van unfortunately farted out a lot of gas, and therefore, we had to be careful not to enter any of these zones on our travels. Thankfully, we didn’t really want to venture into the bigger cities, and ones we did want to go into, like Nice, we just stayed a little bit outside of the zones and walked, or cycled, into town.
Before you go to France, you need to order yourself a Crit'Air sticker. This is a sticker to proudly show how environmentally friendly, or not, your vehicle is. This is the official government website in which you can upload your vehicle details and get your Crit’Air sticker.
Naturally, we didn’t order ours in time for our trip, and ended up printing the most ridiculous looking A4 Crit’Air sticker off at the local library in Exmouth - shout out to them for saving our lives when we realised the sheer amount of paperwork we had to print off before our trip. Anyway, we sellotaped the page onto our back window and that was that.
There’s a bit of a hefty list of things you need before driving to France, hence the paperwork.
We thankfully didn’t get pulled over, but we had everything we needed in a handy folder ready to hand over to the police, just in case.
Overall, we feel that France is not to be missed as a vanlifer in Europe. It’s a beautiful place to drive around, has all the facilities and amenities one could need, and for us, it was well worth the nerves on the lead up to the trip.