Thursday 17th May - We were up early to catch the ferry across from Newhaven (near Brighton) to Dieppe, France. We had a two hour drive to Newhaven, a four hour ferry trip across the English Channel and then another two hour drive from Dieppe down to our caravan park at Cote De Nacre on the Normandy coast. We arrived at Cote De Nacre around 6pm France time. The whole journey was incident free, Loche went very well towing a caravan on the opposite side of the road in a right hand drive car. The Autoroutes in France are great roads and though you do pay high tolls to use them, the speed limit is 130 km/h for cars…though caravans are limited to 100 and most trucks to 90.

Friday 18th May - After quite a busy week sightseeing around Southampton and a big day yesterday, the next few days were spent at the caravan park taking it easy. Our first European caravan park experience was amazing…in this park there was a huge playground for the kids with 5 jumping castles and an ice skating rink as well as an indoor pool and a huge outdoor pool with multiple slippery slides. A restrauant with a good bar and a pizzeria are also on site. We are finding this is the case in all caravan parks in France.

And to top it off the price is a mere $23 /night for all of us. 3 bucks dearer than the pad of dry dust we paid to stay on up in the Cape York in 2010.

We did a lot of relaxing and the first day Cara and I walked into the village to have a look around but found everything to be shut. In France most shops close for at least an hour or two through the day for lunch.

Sunday 20th May - After thinking it over the last few days we decided our best option with the car was to head back to England and buy a new one. We had done over 7500 miles in this car and only paid 1000 pound for it and probably spent another 500 pound on tyres and suspension…all in all we were still in front. We went to a McDonalds and used their WiFi to research some cars. We decided our best option was to leave the caravan at the park and catch the overnight ferry back to Southampton, look at cars all day Monday and try to get the overnight ferry back Monday night. So we booked our ferry ticket and off we went at 11pm headed back to England.

The ferry arrived in Portsmouth (near Southampton) at 6.30am Monday morning, and Cara was about the only one who got a few solid hours sleep. We drove over to Bournemouth (about an hour away) to look at the first car and then up to Croyden, just south of London (2 and a half hour drive) to look at the second car, which we bought. The new car is a 2002 TD5 diesel Discovery in very good condition for it's age with 100k miles.The only downside was it didn't have a towbar and we couldn't get one fitted until the next afternoon so we decided to spend the following morning at Windsor Castle. We found a motel in Eton (about an hour away), right near Eton College and stayed there the night. We loved Eton, it's very quaint and beautiful.

It worked out the tow bar could get fitted first thing Tuesday morning (thanks Kelvin) so we booked the Eurotunnel for that afternoon. About an hour into the drive to Folkestone to catch the train I happened to be checking email and found that a package I ordered had finally arrived at the caravan park we were staying at in Southampton, so we got the tunnel ticket changed, turned around and drove down to Southampton (an hour and a half away) picked up the parcel then drove back up to Folkestone (a 2 and a half hour drive). We tried to get the tunnel ticket cancelled and catch a ferry from Southampton but it was non-refundable. We got on the 6pm train across to Calais then had a 4 hour drive from Calais arriving back at Cote De Nacre just after 11pm. Through all of this, Cara was an absolute trouper!

In less than a week I had crossed the English channel 8 times and Loche and Cara 6 times. We have all crossed it by boat and by train and all from different locations! All part of the adventure....

Wednesday 23rd May - As we hadn't yet seen much of France, we went for a drive around the Normandy area and looked at the D-Day beaches and the very large American and Canadian cemeteries that are in the area. That afternoon we were asked by the caravan park to move our van to the pitch next to ours and it's lucky we did as we found the tow ball we had fitted to the car needed to be spaced out a bit more than what it was. So we had to figure out where to get a new tow ball from.

On Thursday we went to visit Mont St Michel, a gothic-style Benedictine Abbey that is set on a high rocky outcrop looking over the ocean. It is absolutely amazing to see. We didn't make it all the way up the top as we had Cara in the stroller and she was extremely tired after many days on the go. We had a wander through the shops at the bottom before heading back.

After we left Mont St Michel we went in search of some towing shops to find a new tow ball. After trying a few different places we found one that could help us out and had a new one fitted very quickly. The French people Loche spoke to in each of the shops could not have been more helpful. We bought it from a Supercheap type store and it had a workshop attached. The guy told Loche to drive the car around and fitted it for him straight away, free of charge.

Some interesting facts:

• They have buses to transport people from the car park to Mont St Michel and back. The buses don't have to turn around because they can be driven from either end.
• Over 9300 US soliders are buried at one cementry at Omaha Beach, Normandy.
• D Day was a great victory to the allied forces.