Such were our thoughts as we peered from the bedroom window, waking to a calm, sunny day among the well manicured pitches of Thriftwood Holiday Park, near Sevenoaks. So, homeward bound. The return journey had not been entirely stress free.
It began well with a short hop from Zombie Manor in Belgium to Bavay in France. It was great to see Jackie, Edmund and Anna and catch-up with family stuff, over-eat and generally have a good chat.
From Bavay we drove 90 miles or so to St Omer, which gave us plenty of time to stock-up (as ever) in Auchun's cave de vin. In all likelihood we won't be visiting continental Europe until we set out on big trip number two in September. The challenge with setting yourself the target of never again needing to buy over-priced mediocre wine from a British supermarket, is the law of diminishing returns kicks-in. Because you can buy good wine at a good price in France, what happens is that you consume a good deal more. Gill has a theory that the better the quality of the wine, the smaller the bottle becomes. Hence our evening conversation at home tend to go something along the lines of:
"POP"
,,,,glug, glug, (fatuous chat)
"My that was a short bottle!"
"POP"
"My that was a short bottle!"
The only thing that prevents imminent 'hepatic insufficiency' is a well understood, but little discussed biochemical phenomena know affectionately as the HOME indices. For those of you not fully up-to-date with the ground breaking research soon to be published by the biomedics at my favourite entirely spurious institute of higher education, The University of Scunthorpe, here's a brief layman's guide to the findings. HOME is an acronym which stands for 'Hangover misery equation'. This states that on a decade by decade basis the effects of a hangover increase exponentially as follows: given a similar intake of alcohol, the effects of a hangover on a person aged 30 will increase by a factor of two compared to a decade earlier, after another decade you will find that the misery of the morning after will have increased threefold, and so it goes on. I suffered my 60th a few weeks ago, Decade six plus one day did feel terrible, I woke to find the Tories with an overall majority, and the inevitable effect of the HOME indices made my hangover 120 times worse than it would have been on the day after my twentieth. It's just not fair, is it? The upside I suppose is it does put the brakes on drinking within a fortnight the entire wine lake we have tranported back from France safely tucked in Maisy's copious rear garage (what! you thought the space was for bikes...).
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| Pete at 60...before the HOME effect kicked-in |
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| Well maintained service point. |
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| Lake view |
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| Oh look, a tree with a hole.... |
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| click!
We had a pleasant early evening walk, admired the swans on one lake, and the ducks with ducklings on the other. As we returned to the van we noted that the ducklings had hardly moved from the spot where we had first noted them and heaped praise upon the mother duck for her advanced coralling skills. Next morning straight after breakfast we hopped out of the van with some left-over baguette to feed the small flock...Amazing! they were all exactly where they had gathered the previous night. Amazing perhaps, but understandable; it dawned on us they were all highly realistic plastic lures, provided I suppose for local enthusiasts of la chaisse. Boy, we did not half feel stupid, but thankful that we had discovered our error before we had begun to toss bits of bread towards the bobbing plastic replicas.
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As we headed towards the ferry port we got quite a buffeting from a strengthening wind. It did not seem so bad, not a gale. Even so the ferry schedule was totally cocked-up. The DFDS sailings were running four hours behind, and our boat over an hour late. Worse was to come, due to congestion in Dover, ferries were stacked up outside the harbour. We sailed back and forth somewhere between the Goodwin Sands and the white cliffs, which appeared occasionally through thick mist and pouring rain. Though the sea was choppy and the waves white-topped, the boat stayed fairly steady, it must have had good stabilisers, which was very good news from my point of view. I am a terrible sailor.
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| We passed this PO ferry at least 3 or 4 times, just in front of us in the queue... |
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| After four hours the sight of the squally sea looked very tedious |
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| Dover, finally through the torrential rain. |
So, four hours for a trip that should take ninety minutes, Gill read a good chunk of the Honorable Schoolboy, I watched a repeat of Lucie Safapova dispatching Ms.Sharapova at the French Open, and had time to see her live match, where she doled out the same fate to a young Spanish player. The squally weather seemed to be widespread, it was sunny at the Roland Garros, but the gusty wind was playing havoc with the tennis affecting the flight of the ball and the player's attire in equal measure.
Delays in Calais resulted in a backlog of trucks. Consequently we ended-up in the lower hold jam- packed with lorries. It was a squeeze to even open the van door. OK for us, but if we had a young family managing toddlers through it all would have been tricky. Not ideal bed-fellows motorhomes and big trucks - driving off was a bit worrying.
In Dover itself and for miles back along the A20 and M20 the traffic trying to reach the port was utterly jammed. Even though the police had initiated 'lorry stacking' on the M20 hard shoulder, some drivers had ignored this and both lanes were at a standstill for miles. I was relieved to be heading in the opposite direction.
Finally towards late afternoon we got to the ACSI campsite near Sevenoaks only to discover the reception closed. After various failed attempts by Gill to reach someone on a mobile number written on the door she enquired at a bungalow on site. At first the woman pretended she knew nothing, then admitted her son ran the site and rang him. There followed tales of woe about people being off sick or visiting ailing relatives in hospital...it was all a bit like arriving unannounced at Fawlty Towers. There is something not quite right about customer relations at many British campsites. Either they are run in a haphazard and unprofessional manner, like here, or, it goes to the other extreme with uniformed gruppenfuhrers - like in the Camping and Caravan Club sites. Anyway, we did have a minor triumph. This was the first ACSI site in the UK we have stayed in. It's listed in the book at 18 euros. As we had quite a few Euros left Gill enquired if she could use them, and the owner agreed. I don't think that is going to happen again at other sites with Euro exchange rate the way it is.
So, our mini-trip to the Moselle comes to a close. Nothing else planned until autumn - in the meantime the van needs to be repaired after our little bump in Guardamar del Segura. Right now, we don't quite know what we are going to do with ourselves. There is no cure for itchy feet other than to scratch the itch, and we're itching to go already after only two days at home.
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