From the keyboard of Dr Jan

We stayed at the Etap in Mulhouse (France) last night and this morning we visited the National Automobile Museum, aka the Schlumpf Collection.

What an incredible collection of cars. I can quite believe that this is the largest collection of Bugattis in the world. The thing that impresses is the sheer number of cars on display. There were lots of highlights, but the Bugatti Royales were particularly fine.

Well worth a visit for anyone interested in cars

We had lunch at the cafeteria in the museum, which was excellent.

Then we started on the journey back. We zoomed back up the Autobahn – we managed 142 m.p.h., verified on Colin the Sat. Nav. unit.

We stopped overnight at the Etap in Mainz.

German Etaps have much better breakfasts than the French ones. There are breakfast cereals and more interesting things to put on your bread and toast, like pate and cheese as well as jam and marmalade.

Thursday we launched off for Dunkerque, taking the northern route through the southern tip of the Netherlands and then round the edge of Antwerp.

Eventually we got to Dunkerque just past 16 o’clock. Although we were booked on the 21:30 sailing, we were able to catch the 16:45 with no problem. Gold star for the Norfolk Line.

When we got back to Dover, we zoomed up the M20 straight in to 11 miles of 2-lane 40 m.p.h. horrendousness. I suspect it was the hangover from Operation Stack. When Dover fills up with trucks (due to problems in Calais this time, as far as I understand it), the M20 is converted into a truck park.

Extremely frustrating.

Of course, we forgot to put our clocks back when we arrived in the UK, so we thought we’d never get back in time to go to the Toby for dinner. As it was, we made it easily – we even had time to pick up Ruth on the way