Outwit your satnav (as they follow the routes round towns where those towns want to send traffic) by setting Elbeuf as your first destination from. home or from where you leave the A20 or the A11, if you decide to do that last stretch up to Chartres on it that I mentioned.
Then when you are within 5 km of Elbeuf or not much more say 8km max, pick a destination North of Rouen and get the satnav to plan that new journey (abandon the previous journey on the satnav to Elbeuf).
There’s another big IKEA on the left soon after you head away North from Rouen, easy to get off and back on if you want another coffee etc.
When I’ve been in that situation, I’ve asked at the kiosk if I can wait under their canopy and cut in at the correct point in the queue - usually with success.
So I fell asleep before trying to follow @KarenLot instructions (I wasn’t driving ). Hubby woke me to say there was s turn off for Elbeuf do we decided it was too late and just stayed on the A whatever it is and over the bridge. All the roadworks and going through the outskirts of Rouen that we had to do 18 months ago were gone and we just went on the dual carriage way all the was quick and easy! I have to go online to pay the toll, hope it’s not too much!
Thanks for the info, I only know the bridge is pay & no booths to pay from now a days.
If ever I have to drive further than Maidstone, or fly in & have to drive anywhere, I’ll have to put up a new thread on here to have the sp, so not to be caught out on non payment of road tolls.
Getting really bored now. The surface of the M25 is awful, ridge type things making the mist awful racket, I remembered it now from our trip 18 months ago!. Perhsps to put peopleAnd road works keep taking us to one lane at 40 or 50.
I have already forgotten the name of the site to pay the Rouen toll . Hopefully I can find it online if not I’m sure @George1 can help
I used that route about 3 years ago (for the first time in 10 years) and was so alarmed by the noise I thought something had failed in the suspension and pulled off at the first services to check the car over. It was only when the noise stopped completely as I drove on the slip road that I began to suspect that the problem was the road rather than the car.
That would be the southwestern bit around junctions 10 and 12 in my neck of the woods (Reigate to Chertsey) - it’s actually ridged concrete instead of tarmac, as an experimental (cheaper!) surface.
Everybody hates it. There is even an Action Group lobbying to have it resurfaced; National Highways are supposed to be doing some of it as part of the A3 junction upgrade.
ETA: The noise is not just due to the ridged concrete but also the expansion joints between the concrete sections very few metres.
Concrete motorway surfaces last a lot longer than tarmac ones apparently (up to 30 years potentially) but that noise is vile.
