Well it’s D Day and we are no where near ready. John was trying to collate all the kit and pack the car whilst I was finishing off at work. It doesn’t matter how much planning & preparation we try to do, we never actually leave at the time we say we will.
2 hours after our original departure time, we were eventually on the road heading to Folkestone. The traffic heading to the Eurotunnel was pretty snarled up but it was Friday evening so we just had to hope we still made the train.
We arrived at the train terminal with 5 minutes to spare before being pushed onto a later train and being charged a fee for doing so. I have to say, having never done the tunnel before I was impressed with the efficiency. There was a camera at the barrier which recognised our car registration and immediately we were able to check in without any bother. There was time to grab a quick coffee and jump back in the car and 5 mins later we were boarding the train.
We have avoided doing the tunnel in the past as john also suffers from panic attacks and has had them in the past on fast moving trains. The thought of him having an attack somewhere under the English Channel isn’t something either of us relished so for years we persevered with a variety of channel crossings. We needn’t have worried. The whole journey was painless and incredibly fast. Why hadn’t we done this sooner!
Before we knew it we were pulling into Calais and disembarking. Our destination this evening was a campsite in Ghent, Belgium so Google maps was fired up and we wer on our way.
Another thing we don’t do on our road trips is travel on any motorways. Our ETA was now around 11pm. We resigned ourselves to a late first night. We were meeting another friend at the campsite who had already checked in and was calling to find out where we were. He had a bit of a shock when we told him the time we expected to arrive. The campsite was likely to be closed by the time we were meant to arrive so we knew we were going to have some fun later on.
The roads were fairly quiet and we started to eat up the miles slowly. Travelling through various towns in France we eventually reached the Belgian border. Not long to go and we will be asleep on our first night of our Scandinavian challenge.
It was closer to midnight by the time we found the campsite entrance. My navigation skills had deteriorated quite badly since returning from the rally in 2015 and as we kept going round in circles to find the entrance to the campsite it couldn’t have been more obvious. We did eventually find the entrance but everything was in darkness and the barrier down. Our friend who was already at the campsite wandered down to meet us. Unfortunately he was unable to get us in either. We started to look for somewhere to put our tents up but John decided to try and drive towards the barrier again and for some unknown reason the barrier lifted. We were in the campsite and off to find a spot to set up.
An hour later we were asleep.
