A Covid Safe Roadtrip

AAANNNDDDD....we're back - it's been a while since I wrote one of these but I thought a two week roadtrip around France was probably deserving of being documented! And to be upfront - Lou has just received a negative Covid test at work - we'd have called the trip off had that not been received!
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Part 1: Trains
Monday...5am...Cambridge...a very empty platform. This was the beginning of our very first holiday in the Covid-19 era.

Having already spend our prior 2 week planned holiday (RIP Scotland...RIP Annual Leave) at home there was a lot of pressure for this trip to be amazing. Since the UK had only confirmed the countries with which reciprocal removal of the 14-day quarantine on Friday (3 July); planning of this trip had been extremely last minute. Saturday and Sunday spend madly checking travel insurance policies, refreshing train and ferry schedules and trying to cost a 2 week roadtrip! But...as the sun rose on Monday we had a rough plan, just enough booked, and a very long day ahead of us.

By 7am we'd arrived at St Pancras - the bustling crowds present earlier in the year were nowhere to be seen - and as a result customs and security was seamless. Naturally my Australian passport caused issues (why are you going to France...?) but 5 minutes later we were through and nervously standing in a slightly more crowded waiting room. Crowded being a relative term now, there was stickers on every 2nd chair advising social distancing and markings on the floor; however the 2m rule seemed to be more of a 1m-ish rule! Still everyone had a mask on so small favours!


The EuroStar itself was amazing; one person per 4-6 seats felt much safer (compulsory masks too) but sadly no food or drinks (understandably) available. In no time we popped up in France which looks...I guess...French?

Finally we arrived in Paris, no pushing or rushing to get off the train and found the station...largely deserted. A quick run past the convenience store to reload on snacks and water and we were on our way to part two...

Part 2: A Car
One of the reasons the planning had taken so long was due to our trying to avoid flying, or if that was impossible, flying somewhere small and hiring a car with the option to return the car elsewhere. Turns out irrespective of how cheap the flights to small airports are - the car hire fees; even before considering the one way fees - almost entirely made up for the cheap flight. The result being we deemed two trains and a hire car to be safer than one flight and a hire car from a remote airport.

Upon driving the (left hand drive) hire car out of the parking garage into the busy parisian traffic I suspected we may have missed one key variable! 

A solid hour of stop start traffic, several attempts at taking the passenger side of the car out and a few GPS miscommunications and we made it onto the freeway which was BLISS! Suddenly LHD was easy and we began in earnest our holiday - cue 4 hours of roadtrip music and 130k/hr roads!

W​e arrived at our accommodation in Grenoble (Rhone-Alps) with a little bit of sunshine left, we crawled into bed as the sun was setting!