Day 1: Journey to Paris

The first club trip of the season was to be my first experience of a multi-day ECC trip into Europe, visiting three French theme parks and a fair over the course of the Bank Holiday weekend.

The trip began early on Saturday morning. Very early in fact - 5:30am. My Dad gave Tom and I a lift up to Hatton Cross to meet up with the coach and about half the group just before 6:45.

Bus Stop F - handy for the facilities

After a stop off at the old Channel Tunnel visitors centre to pick up the rest of the group (and grab some food in the nearby Tescos) we made our way to Dover and the ferry.

Leaving Dover

Steve concentrating hard to make a bird appear from his hat

Rich thinks he's found a way of getting us to Calais a bit faster

Calais looks, erm, nice? First time I've seen it in the daylight.

We had a brief toilet/food stop at a service station and then journeyed on towards Paris.

Long journeys have strange effects on some people

Are we nearly there yet?

Been there, done that. Buuuuuuuzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!

We got to the outskirts of Paris way ahead of schedule, but it took ages to actually arrive at the hotel due to an interesting combination of French football fans making their way to a big match, crazy Parisian one-way streets and a set of seemingly conflicting road diversions. All credit to Lloyd the driver for getting our massive coach around some extremely tight corners and tiny side streets!

Our hotel from the other side of the Seine - eventually we managed to find a route over the river to reach it!

Foire du Trône >