Deux Old Age Pensioners sur les vacances en Corse

[Seaman]

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Yes, tomorrow Sunday is the start of what, to us, is an adventurous holiday.
We WERE going to start on Monday but Friday evening's BBC weather forecast put the fear of goodness knows what up us. The forecast was for ex-hurricane Katia to smash the living daylights out of the country. Gales and crossing the channel from Dover to Calais don't go together as neither harbour is consistent with being a welcoming place if the seas are running (as it turns out it seems Scotalnd and N. Ireland will be worse hit).
So tomorrow we shall be travelling by the ferry company of choice, SeaFrance, and spending Sunday night in the Campanile at Laon - a nice and most unusual town with an automatic cable railway joining the lower town to the old, upper walled area - worth a visit if you are passing by.
We hope to keep you up to date with our travels and will edit this post hopefully on a regular basis with photographs. This is of course dependent on WiFi zone availability.
Bonne Route,
Jim & Tracey

[3rensho]

Here's wishing you both a great holiday adventure, no traffic jams and clear sailing. Looking forward to the pictures and, since I'm a bit of a foodie (have the belly to prove it ) any culinary reports would be appreciated as WiFi and time permit. Have fun guys and be safe.
I have a lady friend (read wild woman) who is hiking the length of Corsica, north to south, at the moment. Says it's beautiful.

Tom

[ron]

[Image: corsicaheader.jpg]
Yes, tomorrow Sunday is the start of what, to us, is an adventurous holiday.
We WERE going to start on Monday but Friday evening's BBC weather forecast put the fear of goodness knows what up us. The forecast was for ex-hurricane Katia to smash the living daylights out of the country. Gales and crossing the channel from Dover to Calais don't go together as neither harbour is consistent with being a welcoming place if the seas are running (as it turns out it seems Scotalnd and N. Ireland will be worse hit).
So tomorrow we shall be travelling by the ferry company of choice, SeaFrance, and spending Sunday night in the Campanile at Laon - a nice and most unusual town with an automatic cable railway joining the lower town to the old, upper walled area - worth a visit if you are passing by.
We hope to keep you up to date with our travels and will edit this post hopefully on a regular basis with photographs. This is of course dependent on WiFi zone availability.
Bonne Route,
Jim & Tracey

Enjoy yourselves & I hope the weather holds good for you.

[Chris]

Hope you have a safe trip and a great time.

[pch]

Enjoy your hols....hope the berlingo is good to you, report how she performs.....in er own country...ha ha
Pete

[Landgirl]

Day 1: Sunday 11th September

Our first update on progress. So far we've reached Laon 139 miles south of Calais on schedule. The only disappointment is our mpg. Up to now we have only got 39mpg and that is using cruise control for a very large part of the journey. Hopefully things will improve once the engine has freed up a bit as we've still only done around 1200 after the best part of four months of having the car. All being well the next 18 days should go a long way towards achieving that. Tomorrow we're off to Dijon - only about 220 miles so we can take it easy and take our time over getting there. All being well more pics tomorrow.

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Tracey and Jim

[philip]

Hi Tracey and Jim your MPG will go up once your engine has done around 10k well at least mine did.
On a Journey from Glasgow to London at 70mph with cruise on my berlingo does 42mpg so it also depends on how fast you go.

Love the pics!

[Richard Pitman]

I get better mpg NOT using cruise control.

CC tries to maintain steady speed up hill and down dale, better in my view to let speed ease off up hill then speed up a bit down the other side.

CC probably would be best on completely level surface without other vehicles, winds, etc.

[Landgirl]

Day 2: Monday 12th September

Well we've made it to Dijon but sadly no pics today. We were hoping to surprise you with something special but unfortunately, yours truly, i.e. landgirl, messed things up and advised Jim to carry on when we should have exited the Autoroute. Perhaps we'll make our detour on the way back. We also missed another opportunity for a photo as well although not so interesting.

Tomorrow we complete our day's journey in Toulon from where we take the ferry to Corsica. It's a long way (350 miles) but we have plenty of time to complete the journey. It's Lyon that just MAY be the bottlekneck. Case of fingers crossed I'm afraid. Anyway, we'll TRY and put up a posting tomorrow but this depends entirely on the availability of WiFi.

Tracey and Jim

P.S. 1: Jim says it's nice of these French chappies to provide specially painted blue parking spaces for our blue Berlingo!!!
P.S. 2: Thanks for the remarks re mpg. What we didn't say yesterday was that we were driving slightly against a strong wind (approx SW).

[Landgirl]

Hi

It's us again - Tracey and Jim.

Sorry we weren't able to post a message last night but it was a bit hectic by the time we got on the boat and we were shattered. On top of that, unfortunately Jim wasn't feeling so well most of the day and yours truly did all the driving.

I suppose we got to Toulon at around 3pm so did a small bit of shopping and had a drink before going up Mount Faron (around 2000ft) just outside Toulon. Wish we hadn't though! Jim enjoyed the view but I couldn't take my eyes off the road since it was only one vehicle wide with a long drop on one side and a wall of rock on t'other. One thing I CAN vouch for though is the climbing ability of the Berlingo. It did very well and repeated it today coming over the mountains (just under 4000ft) to Bastia. Strangely, the mpg in the 90-odd miles we've done today climbed to 42mpg and with all that use of the accelerator as well! Nothin' so strange as cars.

First impressions of Corsica is wonderful views but jam-packed with cars. Nevertheless, we anticipate having a good time.

Incidentally, I've now found a way to get pics off our little Kodak so all being well that should ensure we have some pics for you every day.

Until tomorrow
Tracey and Jim

PS: Sorry about the lack of pics last night but I was still learning how to connect on the hotel system - and it wasn't to prove easy. In addition we have to bring the PC down to the lobby - we can't do it from our room.

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