We spoke a couple of weeks back about our trip across the channel and down through northern France to the Retromobile Salon in Paris, as we battled the closure of roads, stacking of lorries and vague French diversions. But what we didn’t get onto was the journey back.
Our snug time in the Nissan X-Trail on the way down seemed, to all intents and purposes, to have been bettered by the return journey, mostly due to the lack of confusing road closures and disinterested Gendarmes. That is until night began to fall about 30km south of Calais. As we began to relax thinking that our journey was over and that perhaps we could turn off the heated seats and put the climate control on standby, all hell broke loose.
The sun was not quite beyond the horizon when suddenly the oncoming rush of dark was accelerated by an almost apocalyptic increase in cloud and the ominous approach of some spots of fresh snow. What we weren’t expecting was for that flurry, in the space of around a minute, to turn into a full-on blizzard. On went, the X-Trails full 4x4 system, off went the cruise control and its bright automatic headlights flicked into action. What they illuminated was a road rapidly making the change through black and grey to purest white.