In a five-part series, Henry, a regular of The Calais Wine Superstore, will explain how best to organise yourselves to come over to Calais, stock up, find a hotel and get the best travel deals and make a weekend of it!

In the first part, he makes an unfortunately all-too-common mistake.

"Just back from a cracking wine run to The Calais Wine Superstore or, as it is better known in my circle, “Simon’s.”  I travelled with a couple of good friends, Al and Roy.  This is about our seventh or eighth trip and I wanted to pass on a few words of wisdom.

Am I qualified to do that?  Well, not on the first hurdle that’s for sure. 

We travelled in my one tonne pick up truck: living on Tyneside the journey is a fair old distance so we need to get a big order to make it worthwhile.  Set off at 6 am to beat the traffic and we got an absolute flyer.  By nine o’clock we were having breakfast in Peterborough Services, 200 miles down the road and over half way to Dover.

For some reason I decided to check my passport.... I had brought my wife’s!!

Back north to meet a friend at Scotch Corner to get my passport, and off we went again, now considerably behind schedule.  So I am not exactly claiming any special competence.

The main object of the journey is to stock up with six months' worth of wine.  However, we also like it to be enjoyable, so we always stay overnight in the Calais area, a much underestimated part of France.  To keep the budget sensible a bit of forward planning is worthwhile.

Always check your passport!"

In part two, Henry will advise you on how best to cross the Channel while paying the lowest fares.

Feature Image: www.peterboroughlibdems.org.uk (purely co-incidental!)