Pre-Christmas Europe

This trip takes in a number of European countries over four weeks. We will be staying in Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany and France, and passing through Belgium.

Having driven down to Folkestone, we stayed at the Premier Inn near the Channel Tunnel and made use of their free carer’s room which had an interconnecting door to the accessible room.

The next morning we were up at 5.15am, which gave us an hour to get to the terminal. That was a bit ambitious! Even though we weren’t giving Racheal her breakfast until we got in the train and we had as little as possible unpacked, it still took the full hour to get ready to leave. The drive to the terminal should only have taken 10 minutes, but there was a diversion so it took twice as long. Despite all this we were still boarding the train just after 7am and on our way fifteen minutes later.

We drove along the coast of France and into Belgium. At this point we had been in three countries in less than two hours, including England, but that’s not difficult in parts of Europe. We turned inland at Ostend, heading south-east for our destination, Luxembourg. The driving was all motorways, stopping at a service station for breakfast and a cafe off the main route for lunch, both in Belgium. On the journey we encountered most weathers - rain, sun, wind, sleet, hail and snow.

We crossed the border into Luxembourg at about 2.30pm, with another hour and a half to drive to Remerschen youth hostel on the other side of the country where it borders France and Germany. We were pleased to arrive in daylight and that the journey had gone smoothly.