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Up until now, the trip had been great; I'm not sure everyone believed the cars would really be there.
The bus ride was quite short (the warehouse was just on the other side of Felixstowe from the hotel). As the coach drove into the parking area we saw several of the cars already moved outside and parked together.
There they were; all of 'em -- and undamaged in any way. What a relief! Here's bunch of happy C5 Registry Members:
In the twenty cars we brought to Europe we had at least one example of each C5 body style, year and color -- except green and silver.
After milling about for a time (our favorite activity on this trip) we fired them all up and began our trek to Folkstowne where we would take the EuroTrain through the Channel Tunnel (the "Chunnel") to France.
We were led all the way by our agent Adrian who had arranged much of the England and England-to-France details. He was great.
Not so great was the one-hour plus traffic jam on the M25 highway. Our average speed dropped to under seven MPH but everyone handled this unfortunate circumstance with good grace. And we did have several 100 MPH+ runs before the M25 slowdown caught up with us.
We were late to catch our reservation for the EuroTrain but they put us on a later one so we had an hour to kill at the terminal where we waited. Jock Conner and his brother Mike were already at the terminal (on time) but when we failed to show, they gave up their slot on the train to wait and go with us.
We lined the cars up (as usual) and drew our (usual) crowd.
Then we queued up (there's a lot of waiting on line in Europe) to board the EuroTrain for France:
The train cars hold four Corvettes each (more smaller cars, fewer larger ones). You drive right into the car and set the parking brake. The doors close and off you go. We mostly stayed with or in our cars for the 30+ minute ride under the English Channel to France.
After obeying instructions to remember to drive on the RIGHT side of the road we were off for Paris.
On the way we stopped to refuel and, as we observed all day, the Corvettes drew an admiring crowd:
After fueling (the cars and our bodies) we headed out for Paris. The drive from Calais (the French end of the Chunnel) to Paris is programmed to take a bit over three hours. But the estimate did not include 19 Corvettes. We ran about 100 MPH the whole way; that's 160KPH to you metric types.
One of the mysteries that was not covered completely in many meetings was "How the heck do we find the hotel in Paris"? Dan had graciously supplied maps of Paris but there were two different types with two different artists who prepared them -- it was tough. Finally we just decided to wing it and, no surprise, everyone found the hotel (though many saw MUCH more of Paris than planned). Buzz and Jackie and Gael I pulled over next to a park to try to figure out the way to the hotel; a helpful samaritan put us on the right track otherwise we'd still be wandering through the 7th Arondissment...
With the delays caused by the M25 traffic jam and missing the original EuroTrain reservation, we didn't reach the hotel until nearly 8:30pm.
A quick wash-up and everyone went to dinner; some to the 5star feast that Dan had arranged, others on their own in Paris. I'm pretty sure everyone was back at the hotel and in bed by 1AM. Still couldn't make the modem connection work; but tomorrow is another day....