We once went from Cheshire to northern France. Stayed in Boulogne in a cheap chain hotel hotel and then drove down the coast to the Pierre et Vacance swimming pool near Rue and the bird sanctuary in the Somme estuary. The bird sanctuary is fantastic and you can get a combined ticket that covers the birds and a little train the goes along the coast. The bookshop at the Sanctuary is full of the French versions of bird books by Peter Scott, made me feel rather proud. The French slate the Englsh for celebrating Dunkerque - due to the evacuation, but it hasn't stopped them building a massive museum at Azincourt, together with fantastic commentary by Robert Hardy who was an authority on the longbow. There's also a rather nice Logis de France (or it used to be) at the Eurocamp site at Guines which is quite close to the field of the cloth of gold. Booking a chalet direct with the site is a lot, lot cheaper than going through Eurocamp.
There are sites that are a lot cheaper than Gites de France and in the current climate could take bookings for a few nights just to get some income rather than insisting on a week.I've got a week in a house with a private pool all for me at 300€. The house does sleep 9, but it doesn't bother me at all. It's an old little farmhouse, have been there before and I can just ignore the upstairs and use the downstairs bedroom off the sitting room. The site is called amivac
Because of the problems caused in France by the insanely high e/ers NI equivalent - not sure if it's 55% 60% many restaurants in France will either be closed when you expect them to be open ie Sunday evening, Monday lunchtime, and instead of keeping to their 11.30pm closing time have already closed the kitchens at 9pm. You may have to 'make do' with Flunch - 1/4 roast chicken for 6€95, a cheap starter or just one variety of cheese and only a 250ml bottle of red to wash it down with - but you still get a free choc with your coffee.
There was so little road traffic down to Dover that our planned route didn't work. We used to load DD up with a boiled egg, with the promise of a sausage toasty at somewhere south of Watford Gap. We were at Watford before 10.30 without any traffic, and bribed her to give up the toasty with the promise of lunch on the boat. It was far too early to stop again, we just had to make sure we stopped for a wee at the last services before we hit the M25. That took no time at all - if we'd kept to the original crossing, I think we could have gone to Costco at Thurrock and still been in time!
We'd booked a 5 day crossing, and got on a boat 1 or 2 salings earlier. (There's so little freight traffic on the roads between Christmas and New Year that it was like the 1980s where you could post a letter at Altrincham at 7.30am and be at Dover in good time to check in at 11.30am for the 12 o'clock boat or Hovercraft without rushing.)