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Chalons en Champagne to Lake Lucerne

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Calais To Chalons En Champagne

And so we were off on our Italian trip. We had an early start, leaving at 6am from Derbyshire, which meant two extremely excitable but very tired children and two quite tired adults too! We wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to get to the Channel Tunnel and we also had to factor in that France is one hour ahead of us. This was probably the most nervous part of the entire holiday looking back, because we were worried about missing the train, but we needn't have, we actually made it in plenty of time.
We arrived at Folkestone, 300 miles later, around midday and knew it was only going to take 35 minutes to cross the Channel, as opposed to a 90 minute ferry journey, but it all added to the excitement for the children. We arrived with bags of time and it was only now that we started to relax a little. We arrived in what seems to be the world's biggest car park but with having the motor home, we could park more or less where we wanted and find space to ourselves.


Of course the beauty of having the motor home was that we didn't have to do wander about the car park to stretch our legs because we could do it inside if we wanted. The weather was being kind for England, so we did have a wander and treated the children to a MacDonalds for lunch and did a little bit of shopping. The shopping, by the way is fantastic there. One wonderful memory we will always have was when the kids marvelled at the huge amount of starlings, who were making real racket, swooping in and out over the cars and although we were a few miles away from the coast we could smell the sea  - it really made us feel  like we were on our way. We even had a little kick around a football and once the children got fed up, as children do so easily, we all clambered back into the motor home and watched television.

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Because the Apache Autotrail has two TVs, one in the back, which the children adored being able to lounge on the comfy settee seats with their feet up and bicker amongst themselves what program they wanted to watch, my husband and I pulled down the TV on the visor at the front of the motor home and were able to watch what we wanted. It was nice to be able to have the option without getting distracted by kids TV for a change.

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We got in the queue for caravans and larger vehicles, which we knew had a separate section on train, and were relieved that the traffic flowed quite easily. There was also excellent signage, which prevented or us falling out, which is a good start to any holiday we think you'll agree! The chocks got put down to stop the wheels moving and it was an amazing space with plenty of room to get out and stretch your legs if you needed to, walking down the passageway by the side if you felt the need.  It was just cosy being in the motor home to be honest. When it all went dark it was very exciting, but not at all claustrophobic and as soon as we got in the tunnel, it seemed like no time at all that we were driving out the other side. When we emerged into daylight, everybody in our compartment seemed to cheer and there was a lot of camaraderie.

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Again, the signage was great on the French side and the only thing we had to remember was that we had to be on the right side of the road but it seemed to be quite effortless and we just followed everybody else. The roads were really smooth, with great tarmac, and put some of the UK's roads to shame. It was mainly motorway with massive speed limit signs which change if the weather turns to rain, but we got on the toll roads which meant there were less lorries, and it was much nicer travelling. It cost about £40 all in all, but definitely well worth it.


We reached the campsite around 4 to 5 hours later and we were really looking forward to parking up. We were all extremely tired and were very glad we had arrived. The campsite was very clean with lots of lovely tarmac paths to park the motor home on. We had gone on the website to plan where we would stay and it was as wonderful as the pictures on the net. The staff spoke English and there was a games room and a truly wonderful lake which had herons dotted all around it. We had a very nice peaceful evening and a very good night's sleep after all the travelling. In the morning we had freshly baked bread from the little shop on the site. It would have been a wonderful place to have spent more time and the children really enjoyed whizzing about on their little fold up scooters but we didn't have time to get the bikes out which were attached to the rear of the motor home. We were eager to get off on the next leg of our journey.

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Chalons en Champagne to Lake Lucerne

We set off mid-morning and carried on, quite used now to the speed of traffic and travelling on the wrong side of the road. The scenery was lovely and the further we got into France and the nearer we got to Switzerland, the houses started to change, and began to look like cuckoo clocks we had seen on the internet. They looked like little Swiss chalets but we were still in France. It meant another day of adventure with lots of new scenery to see and we couldn't wait.

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The children were having a fantastic time and were concentrating more now on the scenery rather than the television and their computer games. Any time we saw somewhere with a view we did, because we knew we had plenty of time and had planned the journey well, but to be honest, we were still quite eager to get going and put some distance behind doors and get into another country.

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The roads were still very easy to navigate and the signage very good and the motor home ran so smoothly, it was a dream to drive. It was amusing to see the cars changing to mainly Saabs and the further we went, the more the houses turned into little gingerbread houses. It was mainly motorway but the scenery was amazing. We stopped for food midday and one thing we have to mention is that the food was getting extremely expensive. The petrol was very reasonable thankfully, but the food seemed to be getting more ridiculously priced, the further into Switzerland we got. Mountains were appearing and the scenery was getting very dramatic and again very exciting to see.
We had to go through the Gotthard tunnel which is the third longest road tunnel in the world. I'll tell you all about that on it's own page!

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After the excitement of the tunnel, we arrived at the campsite and we had heard and seen pictures of our destination, but nothing prepared us for what we were about to see. It is called 'the prettiest place on earth' and we wouldn't disagree. Nothing can prepare you for the beauty of this place. For a start, the campsite has to be the prettiest campsite on earth, with everything we needed and a tiered platform arrangement so all of us had a fantastic over the stunning crystal clear, beautiful green water with mountains sloping to huge heights. My husband and I and certainly not the children, had ever seen anywhere like this place and we almost wished we were staying here for the duration of our holiday.

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It was so beautiful. Lake Lucerne takes in rainwater from the mountains and much of the shoreline rises steeply into the up to 1500m above the lake, so they must have been a great site to see with snow on the tops in winter. We knew the next day that we had to circumnavigate the lake by road, which was slow and twisting and would go through tunnels but again, we couldn't wait. We were having a truly great adventure and we were all loving it, not just because we were seeing new countries and experiencing life outside of the UK, but because we had a home from home along with us, a faithful friend and somewhere we all loved very dearly. We knew every night where ever we landed that we would have a cosy home and a comfy bed to sleep in, no matter what.

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Just to mention the food here was astronomical and we were quite glad we had plenty of food in the well-stocked fridge and cupboards of the motor home. Our children had a tiny lump of cheese, the size of a small box of matches, a Coke each and an ice cream and it came to £12 would you believe? We had a great time soaking in the afternoon sun and enjoying the heat and the kids had a fantastic time in the swimming pool. For £70 for the pitch, this really was a fantastic price, and we would heartily recommend it to anyone. It was just unfortunate that it was the drink and the food which was unrealistically priced. We nipped to the bar and had a hot cheese and ham hand toasty called a 'croque-monsieur' and got stung for five pounds each and it wasn't as nice as what we could have rustled up in the camper! But we didn't let it spoil anything.

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While we were there, an old turquoise VW Camper pulled up next to us and we tried not to stare at the elderly gentleman who unpacked everything we seemed to have got in our camper van, even down to the awning he pulled out - the only difference being it was all in miniature, a smaller version of ours. He was a very affable chap and we had a great chat with him learning he was from the Lake Lucerne and he told us lots about the area.

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We stayed overnight and had a fantastic evening watching the light go down over the mountains, sending the lake into amazing colours with the reflections on it like glass. It really gives you a sense of perspective when you see an area like that which is simply breathtaking and one we have found very difficult to explain to friends and relatives when we got back.


Lake Lucerne is definitely somewhere we will definitely come back to and spend more time here with our marvellous motor home, that's for sure.


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