Rouen road works
Discussion
Dear oh dear the joke that are the roads works at Rouen surely the most poorly organised "deviation" in history given the timming (even by french standards) Mostly unsigned saw many cars going round and round two or three times waving at each other then a 40 mins sit to cross the river,nicely rounded off by a 35 mile (perhaps kms!) contra flow just before Calais causing us and many others to miss the ferry.
Oh and the masses had to wait cross legged at the harbour whilst the toilets were "cleaned".
Vive La France!
NB
Great race this year and I do love France!
Oh and the masses had to wait cross legged at the harbour whilst the toilets were "cleaned".
Vive La France!
NB
Great race this year and I do love France!
Edited by Gary11 on Tuesday 25th June 20:41
I got a bit fed up being on lead with my lot so let them go in front for a bit, I did tell them about the bridge, well low and behold they tried to go over the bloody thing! We ended up in a Jam for the next bridge! 
Still it was a bit of fun having a Rev off with some French builders in there van
Still it was a bit of fun having a Rev off with some French builders in there van
Contra flow just short of Calais? Was there on Wednesday, wasnt there coming back yesterday.
As for Rouen plenty of warning about it on here, and alternative routes discussed. My average speed from my front door to Le Mans was 64mph and the return was 63mph excluding stops and time on the ferry. Broadly stuck to the limit on the french motorways as well!
As for Rouen plenty of warning about it on here, and alternative routes discussed. My average speed from my front door to Le Mans was 64mph and the return was 63mph excluding stops and time on the ferry. Broadly stuck to the limit on the french motorways as well!
Chrisgr31 said:
Contra flow just short of Calais? Was there on Wednesday, wasnt there coming back yesterday.
As for Rouen plenty of warning about it on here, and alternative routes discussed. My average speed from my front door to Le Mans was 64mph and the return was 63mph excluding stops and time on the ferry. Broadly stuck to the limit on the french motorways as well!
There was a giant jam about 15 miles before Calais, and we came off. Was looking to go back on a bit further on, but a Gendarme helpfully suggested not, so we moved on.As for Rouen plenty of warning about it on here, and alternative routes discussed. My average speed from my front door to Le Mans was 64mph and the return was 63mph excluding stops and time on the ferry. Broadly stuck to the limit on the french motorways as well!
I went through Rouen, as TomTom claimed to know a route with no delays. There were no delays because it was the closed bridge. Not impressed TomTom! As it happened I don't think I lost too much time, and litterally arrived on the camp 20 seconds after the rest of our group who has a 90 minute lead on me, through some judicious back roads near the circuit...
Came back through Rouen yesterday at about 2pm, flew through it with no hold ups at all, the route the TomTom took us on worked perfectly (it has live traffic) and was much faster than our normal route through.
going down we diverted via the Tankerville (sp?) bridge which was no problem either.
going down we diverted via the Tankerville (sp?) bridge which was no problem either.
Chrisgr31 said:
Contra flow just short of Calais? Was there on Wednesday, wasnt there coming back yesterday.
As for Rouen plenty of warning about it on here, and alternative routes discussed. My average speed from my front door to Le Mans was 64mph and the return was 63mph excluding stops and time on the ferry. Broadly stuck to the limit on the french motorways as well!
We flew down, took the diversion and got to circuit no problem.As for Rouen plenty of warning about it on here, and alternative routes discussed. My average speed from my front door to Le Mans was 64mph and the return was 63mph excluding stops and time on the ferry. Broadly stuck to the limit on the french motorways as well!
Coming back yesterday was a bit of a joke - cleared the first tolls and diversion fine, apart from the 8km queue to the toll on A29 which couldn't handle the volume of returning traffic and the aforementioned p**s poorly timed contra flows from Boulogne toll back to Calais and the motorway lamp change exercise right on top of the junction for the Port.
Yes we missed our ferry, as did many, many others...
Rather odd reading about other PHers problems getting back to Calais on Monday, and sorry to see so much trouble.
Our experience was quite the oppposite. We left for the return journey after breakfast on Monday. We had no problems with any traffic or at any of the peages. At the peage just south of Boulogne there were a few short queues of maybe 4/5 vehicles but this did not concern us as we had my transponder with me so used the tele-peage lane. Aftterwards we noticed that between Boulogne and Calais there were road works with a contra-flow in place of maybe 5 kms, certainly no more. We were not delayed at all. We arrived at Le Shuttle at about 12:00 with a schedduled departure time of 13.20 so we expected a wait. We were told to move towards boarding at about 12:45, joined the high vehicle queue (we were in a Range Rover) and were suddenly boarding the train at about 13:00 and left at 13:05 on what we assumed to be an unscheduled departure. Result!
R.
Our experience was quite the oppposite. We left for the return journey after breakfast on Monday. We had no problems with any traffic or at any of the peages. At the peage just south of Boulogne there were a few short queues of maybe 4/5 vehicles but this did not concern us as we had my transponder with me so used the tele-peage lane. Aftterwards we noticed that between Boulogne and Calais there were road works with a contra-flow in place of maybe 5 kms, certainly no more. We were not delayed at all. We arrived at Le Shuttle at about 12:00 with a schedduled departure time of 13.20 so we expected a wait. We were told to move towards boarding at about 12:45, joined the high vehicle queue (we were in a Range Rover) and were suddenly boarding the train at about 13:00 and left at 13:05 on what we assumed to be an unscheduled departure. Result!
R.
The Leaper said:
Rather odd reading about other PHers problems getting back to Calais on Monday, and sorry to see so much trouble.
Our experience was quite the oppposite. We left for the return journey after breakfast on Monday. We had no problems with any traffic or at any of the peages. At the peage just south of Boulogne there were a few short queues of maybe 4/5 vehicles but this did not concern us as we had my transponder with me so used the tele-peage lane. Aftterwards we noticed that between Boulogne and Calais there were road works with a contra-flow in place of maybe 5 kms, certainly no more. We were not delayed at all. We arrived at Le Shuttle at about 12:00 with a schedduled departure time of 13.20 so we expected a wait. We were told to move towards boarding at about 12:45, joined the high vehicle queue (we were in a Range Rover) and were suddenly boarding the train at about 13:00 and left at 13:05 on what we assumed to be an unscheduled departure. Result!
R.
Really similar to my journey.. We stayed at a friends house in Mayenne on Sunday night, left at 7am for a 14.20 Chunnel crossing. The roadworks at Boulogne were 8km (I remember seeing the sign) and we just breezed straight through at a sensible pace. there was no queing at the tolls, and arrived almost 3 hours early for our crossing. I expected to be waiting for hours, but got offered a 12.50 crossing, although we actually got loaded onto the 12.30, got off at the other end, 1 hour back home, and walked in the door at 1pm - 7 hours door to door. Our experience was quite the oppposite. We left for the return journey after breakfast on Monday. We had no problems with any traffic or at any of the peages. At the peage just south of Boulogne there were a few short queues of maybe 4/5 vehicles but this did not concern us as we had my transponder with me so used the tele-peage lane. Aftterwards we noticed that between Boulogne and Calais there were road works with a contra-flow in place of maybe 5 kms, certainly no more. We were not delayed at all. We arrived at Le Shuttle at about 12:00 with a schedduled departure time of 13.20 so we expected a wait. We were told to move towards boarding at about 12:45, joined the high vehicle queue (we were in a Range Rover) and were suddenly boarding the train at about 13:00 and left at 13:05 on what we assumed to be an unscheduled departure. Result!
R.
The contraflow after Rouen heading north was not really a problem but after going through the toll booth at Boulogne the traffic started to back up at the top of the hill after the big bridge and was like that all the way to Eurotunnel. I turned off and ventured along the old B roads on the coast passing the Atlantic wall gun batteries I came past the toll booth about 2:30pm The other problem was that the coast road also was having road work issues!
Davwlk said:
Came back yesterday via Yvetot and no problems until the contraflow at Calais, I think 35 miles is a bit of an exaggeration though
We were via Yvetot too and made a few detours to Crecy and Agincourt. At one point I saw a sign for Arras and thought "Let's go there too." A little later realised that was two sides of a BIG triangle and decided to head to Calais passing through St Omer and thus avoiding the Western approach to Calais, more by luck than judgement though. Made an earlier ferry by ten minutes and payment of a tenner, which was well worth it.
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