We’re safely ensconced in the Ibis budget hotel Rouen Nord which is a little grim but takes dogs and has all the necessary creature comforts with little of the desirable getting in the way.

The day started normally enough with Dorothy finishing off packing bits and bobs of food, dog stuff etc while I did the heavy lifting of walking Tal and Perro around the playing field and allotments. Both accomplished their normal motions with little fuss but Tal shook his head every now and then as if he had water in his ears. Scratch water, replace with blood.

When I checked him over back in the house it was clear that both ears were substantially thicker than normal, patchy red and hot. Dorothy made an emergency call to our vets and at 9 o’clock Tal and I were ushered in to a practice room to have his ears investigated. With muzzle attached, Tal bore the investigation with injured dignity. It would appear that two pieces of cartilage in the ear have separated and ruptured some small blood vessels which have enlarged the ears. Probably caused by vigorous head shaking in response to an allergy to something. The young vet got a second opinion, injected him with a steroid and rubbed a topical steroid cream into both ears. Tal took all the attention with uncommon forbearance.

Back in the car we headed to Folkestone to pick up the eurotunnel train.

After a fairly uneventful journey with one aborted attempt at charging en route in Cobham, we arrived at Folkestone services where we charged successfully before making our way onto the huge eurotunnel campus. We presented our animal health certificate for Tal and Perro, scanned them to prove that they were the same dogs as on the certificate and were allowed to join an earlier train.

There’s not a lot to say about the train. It’s an ugly beast but clearly functional and extraordinarily powerful.

The i3 is a small car so we found ourselves on the upper deck which we drove along for some distance before parking nose to tail. Large doors separated us into five cars per carriage and within a few minutes of stopping we headed off. Lorries, coaches and SUVs presumably had single decker carriages to themselves.

The journey was a mere 30 minutes and with no further checks we found ourselves driving along the quiet french motorways towards Rouen.

We stopped in Aire Baie de Somme

for a quick walk with the dogs, a small salad and a hefty dose of charge before completing the final 100+ km to a very grotty Intermarche with decent charging.

A short 3 km found us here.

Tal’s has had his evening steroid cream rub, Dorothy and I have had some pitta bread, hummus, tomatoes, olives and salad from the MCG polytunnel washed down with Dalston’s elderflower drink.

All very reminiscent of our trip to the western edge of Brittany in a tent with only two eggs left and no money forty years ago. God we were hungry.

Not a lot to do now except read, watch the rain, write this blog and dream of warmer weather in (hopefully) sun drenched Andalucia. (sigh)

Bon voyage