A word to the wise. When you put your back seats down – the better to fill the car with possessions not as yet in store or at the auction rooms attracting bids of 50p – it’s as well to put all the seat belts clunks into their clicks. That is, before you cover the seats three feet deep in stereos, suits, shoes, boxes, CD display cases and pictures. Leaving the clunks unclicked leads to a sudden outbreak of piddle-diddly-piddly-diddly-piddly, an engaging enough sound until you’ve been driving fifty miles and are still wondering what it is. After that point, it becomes tiresome. The rooting about that follows delays one’s journey.

I’d forgotten how quick and efficient the Eurotunnel is compared to ferries. But mainly I simply cannot remember the terminal being such an unmitigated ripoff. Perhaps it wasn’t previously, but has become so.

The ‘special offer’ on water was £2.50 for two sub-microscopic bottles.

Keen to get rid of £30 in cash, I strolled over to the Travelex desk, where a smiling woman remarked how cold it was and asked what she could do for me. So I told here and she said that, with commission and fees, £31.50 would get me €30.

The current rate for Sterling’s value against the euro is 1.18. The Travelex rate I got was 1.0475. With a commission of £2.86 (nearly 6%) my Pounds were converted into currency notes worth less than the euro equivalent number. Thus is the value of stuff turned upside down by rapacious greed. I tried to explain this to the dear lady and she smiled a great deal before handing me back less than I’d given her for no reason beyond cynical profit.

Over on the French side, a litre of diesel now costs €1.45….at the cheap stations. At most places it’s €1.56. When I left last July, it was €1.34 at the expensive places. The current claimed French inflation rate is 1.3%. I wonder of there is, beyond Britain’s ONS, a statistical source anywhere that can be trusted.

But a good half of me now is almost French. I love being back here. The autoroutes are empty, the signs are easy to follow, the cheap restaurant salads are on a par with those at The Ivy, and the sunset across the Picardy plains was a wonder to behold. It was marred only by the hundreds of daft propellers ambling round and round slowly across the landscape, but no doubt the French too will soon realise what a gigantic piece of expensive Green onanism they are, and take them down again.

Here I am in Troyes, in southern Champagne. The hotel is nice enough, although the towel provision is based on the assumption that I’m only 3’7″ tall. Could be that they specialise in Japanese and Hobbit tourists. But it’s more than adequate, the room is spotless, and the wifi is free. Tomorrow, more autoroute beckons. By early evening I should be at the French Roost du Sloggeur. I have left Britain behind for the time being, and the sense of relief is almost impossible to describe.