Hotel in Another Dimension

It all began innocently enough in October 1979, when two couples in Dover, England, set off on a vacation together intending to travel through France and Spain. It ended in a journey that took them to another world.
Geoff and Pauline Simpson and their friends, Len and Cynthia Gisby, boarded a boat that took them across the English Channel to the coast of France. There they rented a car and proceeded to drive north. Around 9:30 that first evening, October 3, they began to tire and looked for a place to stay. They pulled off the autoroute when they saw a plush-looking motel.
Len went inside and in the lobby encountered a man dressed in an odd plum uniform. The man said that there was no room in the motel but there was a small motel south along the road. Len thanked him and he and his companions went on
Along the way they were struck by the oldness of the cobbled, narrow road and the buildings they passed. They also saw posters advertising a circus, which was very old-fashioned.
Finally the travellers saw a long, low building with a row of brightly lit windows. Some men were standing in front of it and when Cynthia spoke with them, they told her that the place was an inn, not a hotel. They drove further down the road until they saw two buildings, one a police station, the other an old-fashioned two-storey building bearing a sign marked "Hotel". Inside, everything was made of heavy wood. There were no tablecloths on the tables, nor was there any evidence of such modern conveniences as telephones or elevators.
The rooms were no less strange. The beds had heavy sheets and no pillows. There were no locks on the doors, only wooden catches. The bathroom the couple had to share had old-fashioned plumbing.
After they ate, they returned to their rooms and fell asleep. They were awakened when sunlight filtered through the windows, which only consisted of wooden shutters, no glass. As they were sitting eating their breakfast, a woman wearing a silk evening gown and carrying a dog under her arm sat opposite them.
At that point two gendarmes entered the room. "They were nothing like the gendarmes we saw anywhere else in France, their uniforms seemed to be very old" said Geoff. Their hats were large and peaked.
Despite the oddities, the couples enjoyed themselves and, when they returned to their rooms, the two husbands separately took pictures of their wives standing next to the wooden shutters.
On their way out Len and Geoff talked with the gendarmes about the best way to take the autoroute to Avignon and the Spanish border. The officers did not seem to understand the word "autoroute", and the travellers assumed that they did not know how to pronounce the French word properly. The directions they were given were quite poor, they took the friends to an old road some miles out of the way. They decided to use the map instead and take a more direct route along the highway.
After the car was packed, Len went to pay his bill, and was astonished when the manager only asked for nineteen francs. Len explained that there were four of them and that they had eaten a meal. The manager only nodded.
On their way back, the two couples decided to stop at the hotel again. They saw the old circus signs, but there was no hotel alongside it. Thinking that they had somehow missed it, they went back to the motel where the man in the plum suit had given them directions. That motel was there, but there was no one in the unusual suit, and the clerk denied such an individual worked there.
The couples drove three times up and down the road looking for something that, they were now beginning to realise, was no longer there. It had vanished without a trace.
Upon their return to Dover, they had their rolls of film processed. In each case the pictures of the hotel were in the middle of the roll. But when they got the pictures back, the ones taken inside the hotel were missing. There were no spoiled negatives. Each film had its full quota of pictures. It was as if the pictures had never been taken, except that there was evidence that the camera had tried to wind on in the middle of the film. Sprocket holes on the negatives showed damage.
A psychiatrist hypnotised Geoff to see if he could recall anymore of the peculiar event. He added nothing more to what he subconsciously remembered.