To France: the Dordogne for Christmas

It was the Dordogne for Christmas in a converted station halt in a small hamlet near the splendid town of Excideuil. 

Outings to Martignac and Sarlat were followed by time on a farm run by Thierry and Diane. We fed calves and saw the evening milking. Cows had a quick and effective response to a 'foreign' calf coming to milk, but not one I would recommend. Three days in, we had our Waterloo moment. Coming round a very sharp bend on a narrow road was our German Mercedes and it's British driver. Unfortunately, coming from the other direction was a French Peugeot on the same piece of tarmac. The outcome was another Waterloo with the French car 'totalled', and the Mercedes in need of some tender loving care, but eminently repairable. The female French driver was not Napoleon, but in fact Josephine.....
This did not affect a wonderful time 

and we were very pleased that Father Christmas found his way with the reindeer to France. He even left his footprints!

The way home was amusing. Everything was fine until the ferry at Calais where we said goodbye to the replacement C3 (which never seemed to need to visit a petrol station). A full set of luggage and the family, no trollies, and a late ferry left us at 9pm at night at the Dover terminal contemplating options. The last train was 10.44pm and we had tickets for 7.44pm. There was no connection from London. Should we stopover in Dover? Not a sentence I've ever had to use before.
It was midnight as we came into St Pancras International. A huge amount of luggage, three very young children, and no trollies again. The trainguard was brilliant - a real railwayman. As we relayed down the platform I spotted a trolley and as the family came closer it looked eerily like a carbon copy of our situation - young children, lots of pieces of luggage etc. They were getting on the train and explained they had just a car crash in France! General laughter. This required a group photo, and agreement about the good old British 'Never say die' spirit. They gave us the trolley, and then we then entered our nine-seater taxi driven by a very obliging Farzad from Old Town.