Wednesday 22nd April 2026, 17:01
Decided that instead of waiting for an early morning sailing that I'd see if it was possible to get to Dunkirk in time for an early enough sailing this afternoon/evening to check in to a hotel in Dover today.
It turns out that all the sailings are the same ridiculously inflated price today regardless of time of day or night. So I booked the 18:00 departure which gets in at 19:00 local time after a two hour crossing. Then I booked a room at the Travelodge which was cheaper than anything that Booking.com had to offer, at least the places that looked like I wouldn't catch something from them. But nothing goes perfectly smoothly, my UK bank insisted on sending a one time code to confirm the payment to my UK mobile, which I had left in the car. So I had to walk through IKEA to my car and then back to the restaurant to connect to WiFi again. I'm sure that the last time I bought something with that card that I confirmed it in the app.
So then I had to get moving and keep an eye on my ETA because the route planner said I only had half an hour safety margin.
So I kept the charging sessions short and I've arrived at the ferry terminal with 30%/95 km. Luckily there is a Tesla supercharger in Dover now so that's more than enough charge. The first time I did this journey in 2017 the first UK charger was in Maidstone so that was a bit stressful as the last charger before Dunkirk was at Bruges. Of course even that wouldn't stress me much now that I know how the car behaves and how reliable the car's state of charge predictions are.
But I could have charged as much as I liked because when I checked in at the terminal the pretty young French woman in the booth told me the departure was delayed by an hour :-(
One piece of good news is that the café in the terminal is open! So I've just spent ten Euros on a quite good wholemeal baguette filled with herbed chicken and salad with an acceptable Americano. In a paper cup though.
