After a very uncomplicated ferry crossing, we arrive well on English soil. Both the port in Calais and the one in Dover are super organized and well signposted. Since we take the ferry on a Wednesday during the week and relatively early in the morning, it has mainly trucks on the ship beside us. When driving down from the ferry we feel quite tiny between all the big and long trucks, even though we are not a small bus ourselves.

BritStops

In England, wild camping is not generally prohibited, but it is still more difficult than in many other European countries, as virtually every piece of land is privately owned. The law states that you must ask the owner of the land. However, it is often difficult to find the owner.

With BritStops there is a great alternative. BritStops is an association of local pubs, wineries, farms, etc. that each offer a pitch for a maximum of 24h. You buy a one-time book with a sticker for the windshield for 28 pounds and can stay for free on over 1’100 such BritStops. Of course, the operators are happy if you buy something in their farm stores or treat yourself to a beer in the pub, but generally the pitches are free.

Unfortunately, the book is hard to be delivered to Switzerland at the moment. Therefore, we are sent to a pub, which also offers a BritStop, in Folkestone right next to Dover, where we can buy the book.

Folkestone

We wouldn’t have visited Folkestone at all if we weren’t here for the BritStop book. However, Folkestone is so typically English and such a stark contrast to the places in northern France that we fall in love with the town and feel even more encouraged in the decision to come to the UK.

Here we also directly buy a SIM card with data volume so that we are online in the UK. The internet makes things much easier.

On the ferry, Paddy has already made himself smart about the providers. We find, thanks to Maps.me (offline map app), an EE store relatively quickly, where we get a SIM with 100GB data for 30 pounds. The data we do not use up within a month, we can transfer to the next. We think this is a really fair offer, especially since we are used to the prices in Switzerland.

St. Margaret

From a local we get the tip to visit the St. Margaret Cliff. From experience we know that tips from locals are either super good or you can find a local store of an aunt / uncle who wants to sell us expensive tourist junk. This tip belongs to the former category!

The white chalk cliffs are really impressive and there are several trails that invite you to a leisurely walk. We could admire the cliffs already from the ferry, now we stand on them.

This is a detour that is worthwhile and we highly recommend it to you.