THE JOURNEY TO OUR NEW LIFE
Part One
Well we finally set off at about 12.30 after a nightmare start. After loading the last minute bits and hooking up the caravan, we realized we were far too overloaded. Panic set in…. what the hell was we gonna do. After a few minutes rushed thoughts I got my daughter to load her car with all the bits we could do without and one thing we could have done with keeping…. all the food we bought for our travels and to tied us over for the first few days till we found our feet. All of it was going to have to be skipped! The van felt heavy as we made our way slowly, making sure the caravan was steady. We could only go 50 miles an hour so it’s taken almost 6 hours to get to Dover but when we got there, they said we were too early as our boat wasn’t leaving till just after 11, so if we paid an extra £60 we could catch the next ferry or we could catch the 9. 25 ferry, no extra charge. Guess which we opted for ! Anyway just enough time to stop, feed and walk the dogs and finally have something to eat ourselves as we hadn’t eaten all day. Now we're just waiting....
Well we finally arrived in Calais at midnight, after a very noisy trip. The ferry was full of French and German school kids, hundreds of them ! Getting off the ferry was interesting, we were trying to find our bearings as well as concentrate on driving on the other side , we were driving through customs, only to have some mad French woman jump out in front of us, waving a torch signaling for us to pull over, my heart sank and all I kept saying to Andy was I knew we’d be the ones. Five minutes later a young man came over , asked us a few questions and wanted to look at our dogs, luckily his girlfriend also had a staffy and he proceeded to show us a picture haha. He then waved us on our merry way as we sighed with relief ( I think it was the dog that helped ) . I had visions of them asking us to unload the van so they could check it, id rather get arrested than let that happen seeing as it took 2 days to load!!!
Off we went, ready for the onslaught of miles ahead of us. Amazing how busy it was at that time of night. Some of the roads weren’t too great, some stages it felt like driving over cobbles but all in all not too tragic. The dogs seemed to be coping quite well, which I’m so pleased about as I have been worrying it would be too stressful. We travelled throughout the night till 6.30 this morning and have finally reached Germany ! It’s taken a while but we could only manage an average of 50 miles an hour because of the weight of the van and caravan. Andy has pulled into a big layby for a well earned sleep, so while he’s fast asleep in the caravan, I’m sitting in the van writing this blog, bursting for a pee and wondering why Andy pulled up in a place with no toilet!! ……….
