A quick update as we’ve been on the road for about 11 hours, covering over 500 miles of our journey across Spain and France.

An early start to the day and the eight of us (4 caravan outfits) set off from Camping Olympia at 08:00. Barry and Denise paired with Brian and Jean; Paul and Andrea with ourselves. We would arrange to meet somehere close to the French border and decide on our strategy for the night.

There are no campsites open in France, so we’ll need to be wild camping at Motorway services and it feels a little more comfortable in a group.

More new from the advance party – DFDS is requiring customers to rebook and then potentially re-assigning them to the Calais Dover route. At considerable expense (over £1k for the two of us), Paul and I decide to buy some fully flexible Eurotunnel tickets. Just turn up and go… We now have three sets of tickets back (Brittany Ferries, who have now shut down their phone lines!!! DFDS and Eurotunnel. We hope one of the threee will strike lucky).

We arrive at the French border around 13:00 and there are hour long queues to get through. Other than the traffic is being throttled by only havng 2 Peage lanes open we didn’t really see any border checks. Certainly no passports were viewed nor any temperatures taken.

The traffic is extrememly light as one would expect and 99% of the traffic is made up of trucks and campervans / caravans. There are a number of addtional roadblocks in France but we aren’t scrutinised.

We reach an Aire south of Saintes at about 18:00 after a mammoth 500 mile tow and there are a few dozens campervans, caravans and lorries in place. Aire de Saint-Ledger has full facilities whch are clean. There is even a shop open with a fully stocked shelf of toilet roll…

News in from Camping Rosaleda in Spain is that the touring part of the site closes on Thursday. All communal facilities are to close (eg washrooms, showers, laundry) and the only option is for travellers to rent one of the bungalows.

But… this is a fast moving situation and everything is closing down around us and it looks like we made the correct descision to bail out.