Onward to France...

After a four hour layover in Cincinnati, we boarded the Delta airplane which took off promptly and headed east. In our book, this is the toughest part of visiting Europe. Eight PM in Cincinnati starts an eight hour flight to Gatwick, England making arrival time four o'clock the following morning. Add to this a time change of five hours and the local arrival time in the UK becomes 9:00 AM the following morning - the start of a new day, having already been up for twenty plus hours. Pretty wearing.
We were picked up at the airport by Heidi's owner and whisked away to the Heidi House. Later in the day, we bought enough groceries to get us to the continent and then set about completing the preparation of the little camper van. In the evening, our host, Paul, the wannabe hippie, served up one of his delicious dinners, after which we reviewed some maps and travel books before retiring. Bright and early on Friday morning we completed our pre-flight training and took off in the direction of Dover, a seaport on the southeast corner of England, valiantly remembering to drive on the left side of the road in a left hand drive vehicle no less!
Dover is a busy port and, even in this, the low season, about 30,000 passengers, 200 passenger coaches, 5,000 cars and 8,000 semi style trucks cross the English Channel each day from this one location. We bought a ticket to Calais and quickly boarded the 3:15 PM Sea-France ferry. The crossing to Calais - 22 miles or so - takes about 1-1/2 hours and picks up another one hour time change to get on western European time. Remarkably, a 500 mL bottle of water at the bar on the ferry cost $2.80 while 750 mL bottles of wine were only $3.20 in the duty-free store. We took the opportunity to stock up on vino.

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After disembarking in Calais we made the short trip to the local Aire de Service at the Calais "Silver Beach" and enjoyed a much needed early night.