We were caught up on the other side of the channel on Thursday not knowing what was going on We saw the motorway leading to the tunnel was packed with lorries and cars and took a quick detour through Calais to see if we could get around it, no such luck. This was at 10:00 am in the morning and the hotel in Lumbres we had just left didn't mention anything about the strike. Our shuttle was due out at 11:50 (French time) and we knew we would not be on that one so decided to go to the ferry terminal see if we could buy a ticket as the ferries were still working then. The ticket office couldn't sell any tickets so we were back to square one.

Had a nice lunch in Calais (Le Detroit - always a nice meal there), then we looked at the motorway again and yes it was still packed and backing up nearly to Dunkerque. By 5pm we were shattered from going backwards and forwards so decided to book into a hotel for the night and try again in the morning. We had been listening to the BBC news for updates but nothing came through and the French didn't give out much information other than they were on strike

I later (on Friday back in the UK) found out that the traffic was flowing by the early hours and if we had joined the queue we would have been home by about 9 a.m the following morning We managed to get on the 08:50 shuttle on Friday morning and were home by lunchtime.