All things come to an end and its time to go home. We decided to stop over night at Le mans again, this time in a slightly different place.
Reports of the disruption with the ferries and the tunnel was giving us some food for thought though. On tuesday we left the gite and were making good time until we were about 14k from Le Mans. I had slowed down to about 115 KPH as we were getting near to our exit, when I heard that grinding noise. The front tyre had gone completely flat. Quite annoying as I had had 4 new tyres about 2 months before.

Fortunately the Gendarmes turned up tout suite but it took about 2 hours and a bit to get lifted on a truck and of the Autoroute and a tyre change. we did manage to find a bit of shade, but I did not have quite the right outfit for scrambling through brambles. It was also about 37c and we were getting a bit low on water by then. Unfortunately the spare was knackered so we limped in to le Mans off having come off the Autoroute. After arriving at our accommodation we had to figure out a plan. We did not at this point know if Le shuttle was running either. After a very hot and sleepless night we had avery quick breakfast and drove off to find a tyre fitters. we found a Mr speedy (French quickfit but better) and using some very bad French and sign language got the tyre changed, however there was another problem, the very through mechanic invited us in to the workshop to feat our eyes on the back of the rear break drum which was liberally coated in brake fluid. he opened it up and the cylinder had failed and there was an interesting mess of broken seal and gunge inside. After more bad french he said he could sort it and it would take une huere, and true to his word it did.
I suspect because they needed to get it done before lunch

At just about 12.15 we were rolling again and needed to get to Calais for a 4.50 check-in. The first hour we had to hold the speed down to get the tyres run in then there was the usually slow bit going around Rouen then 130 kph to the port apart from a quick pit stop to wee. As we approached Calais the tale end of the dreaded buchon loomed in to sight but fortunately the passenger shuttle lanes were clear and we checked in and quite quickly got loaded. We did spot a few guys wandering about on the side of the road eyeing up the trucks, but not much else.

At this point there was a technical fault on our train as the smoke/fire alarm had gone off so the train left about an hour later than it was scheduled.

At the Kent side it soon got interesting as the M20 was closed and being turned in to a giant Lorry park so much wandering about to get to Maidstone where the M20 was open again. Finally got through my front door at about 10.00.