Assuming you’ve just bought a car from North London and are planning on driving to France, you’ll want to know the best method of getting across the English Channel as quickly and as cheaply as possible. With a little bit of advanced planning and some luck, you can anticipate how long the drive and crossing will take or, in other words, exactly how absurdly late you’ll be up driving in a desperate attempt to reach your destination.
1. Leaving London
Escaping Leaving London is, as one would expect, slightly tedious. Most of this comes from the very old and unchanged road layout that gives the city its charms, but unfortunately is not particularly conducive to rapid travel to the periphery. Luckily, every region has major, well designed connecting roads that will usher you quickly and efficiently to the Motorway and specifically your end goal: the M25. These roads are well maintained and planned out, giving you many options to quickly get out of the city. You may find yourself confused at times as to which direction you are going: don’t worry, this is entirely normal and part of the advanced psychological preparation process employed by city planning engineers to help people get intimately familiar with every road in their area. If you find yourself driving seemingly at random then you’re surely on the right track and should soon encounter further obscure signage to help you on your way.
2. The M25
The M25 is by far the fastest and most efficient motorway in the northern hemisphere, with the exception of all others. Travelling this marvel of efficiency is both a pleasure and testament to British engineering prowess. You’ll quickly find yourself cruising along at a grand speed of almost nearly dozens of miles per hour at some points.
Some vehicles, unsuited for such endurance and speed, will find themselves abandoned in the middle of the road. This will result in being swiftly culled from the herd and ensconced in a safe area within a ring of traffic cones. These cars will be ushered quickly out of harm’s way, but only after a rigorous health and safety risk assessment has been performed to consider the implications of moving said vehicle the nearly 12 feet to the hard shoulder and out of the line of traffic. This generally shouldn’t take more than a few hours, giving you lots of time to admire and explore the beautiful North London countryside from the safety of your own stopped car. While you swiftly pass stopped vehicles, consider honking cheerily to wish their owners well. Many of your fellow motorists will be doing the same.
If you’re lucky, you might even get caught in one of London’s notorious and refreshing rain showers, kicking up road grime and quickly giving your windscreen a nice thick layer of grease to help remove any contact you might have with the outside world.
3. Dartford Crossing
As everyone knows, all well engineered and rapid moving toll systems accept a variety of payment systems – ranging from contactless RFID systems and card payment to throwing coins into a receiver or dealing with a friendly attendant. Darford, in their infinite wisdom have managed to capture their niche market by tapping into olde England fantasy lore: doing away with any trappings of the 21st and late 20th centuries completely.
In fact, they’ve managed to actually find real bridge trolls to gainfully employ, liberating them from the wilds where they had been cast aside centuries ago. To those ends, these friendly and courteous attendants will gracefully accept any currency they recognize from their era, including and limited to: coin, bills, and animal sacrifice.
(We are of course aware that the Dartford crossing recently implemented a fast-pass RFID system which is of course completely suitable for those who can manage to tolerate a crossing more than once every several years, but since we didn’t have six months to wait for the RF token to arrive in the post, we had to make do)
If presented with a form of plastic currency such as card or credit, the attendant will generally grunt and shake his head awe, stating that such a payment method is unacceptable and, perhaps not even real. If you lack suitable ‘real’ currency to pay for the crossing, you can expect an informative and one-sided “conversation” wherein the attendant will respond to your lack of currency with repeated requests for coin. If you finally manage to convince the attendant that you in fact have no coin, then you will be given a bill slip to be paid unconditionally within the next seven days on pain of death.
4. The Dover Approach
If you’re travelling in the spring, summer, autumn or winter, you might be lucky enough to observe the painless experience of England’s professional and efficient road works teams. Since the roads to Dover are well used they of course need to be well maintained: this means diligent resurfacing works every 12 or perhaps even 6 months to keep the surface in top form. Helpful road attendants will keep traffic moving at a jolly pace. Unfortunately, it was recently mandated by law that motorists wave happily and toot horn at road crews to keep morale up, which means you’ll have to slow your vehicle while in any such construction zones.
5. On the Ferry
The obsolete SpeedOne, constructed 1996.
I’ve mentioned before that the ferry trip from England to France used to be a quick and cheap affair. Modern technology had generally succeeded in revolutionizing the process of efficiently conveying large numbers of vehicles across the channel with relative ease and speed. Luckily in more recent times, saner minds have prevailed and have managed to completely expunge any option of a fast/cheap channel crossing by efficiently dealing with all competition and replacing them swiftly with one ferry operator cabal. Once again, we’re saved from facing a choice of crossing providers, long gone are SpeedFerries, the catamaran ferry and its hovercraft companion from HoverSpeed. Instead having been replaced with the much more sanely speeded classical ferry services of P&O, SeaFrance and DFDS Norfolkline.
The pinnacle of comfort, M/S Maersk Delft, constructed 2006.
Luckily, while these ferries may be somewhat slower than their extinct competition, they do offer a much more reasonable range of onboard entertainment ranging from the smell of vomit to the relaxing sounds of screaming children, all easily available for your pleasure and entertainment. In fact, so keen are they on providing such an outstanding quality of service, that they’ve taken measures to provide these services on all levels and in all areas of the vessel so you can be assured that you’ll be able to appreciate them no matter where you go on board.
Additional venues also include ‘massively overpriced cafeteria food’, ‘overcramped sitting areas’, ‘overpriced duty free’ and the ever popular ‘sitting on deck in the cold’ incase the previous aren’t to your satisfaction.
