A couple of years ago I was very pleased that I was suitably prepared for VFR. IFR departure from Calais, inbound to Cambridge. Flight planned IFR all the way. Normal IFR departure clearance from Calais, and a handover to London. London weren't expecting me and couldn't accept me due to traffic density. Interesting couple of minutes ensued:
"Remain clear of controlled airspace and continue VFR"
"I'm in controlled airspace, and I'm IMC"
"Roger, descend immediately. Call VMC below, and clear of controlled airspace"
What you got was that old chestnut, discussed here previously.
In short, Calais do not have a letter of agreement with London
Control. Only Paris Control have that. So, flying from France to the UK, you need to be talking to Paris
Control. How do you achieve that? One way is to fly at
FL120 or higher. Another is to fly certain routes (not Class E though).
The "London" you got from Calais was London
Information. The clue might have been the 124.60 frequency but a foreign pilot would not have known that.
This is a well known nasty which happens to pilots flying France-UK at say FL080 - despite the fact that at the FIR boundary FL080 is
in CAS. You get handed to London Info which is an eviction from CAS. Personally I get around it by always being FL120+ over France - no problem if you have oxygen.
This does not affect jets etc because they are always high enough.
You can get similar things happening if you file a route which briefly leaves CAS, especially in the UK where London Control will drop the service in such a case.
What is supposed to happen is that ATC are supposed to warn you if you ask for a shortcut which might leave CAS. But if you are flying a route which you filed, they may not warn, and just drop the service.
Then, I suppose, you will need the VFR charts
I am leaning towards getting rid of all the Jepps Aerads with the hateful task of updating them and going to something like a couple of I Pads with data and hardcopies for enroute charts departure destination and alterantive airports only. Everything else as data on computers
Just buy Jeppview 3. Similar price to the paper version. Print off what you need from that, and if you carry a tablet computer which runs windoze you run JV3 on that, for unplanned diversions etc. I gather that Jepp are doing an Ipad viewer for their plates; just announced (which will please
SolidFX 
although their product is far more sunlight-readable than the Ipad)