Polar Challenge Blog

Day 2 – Champagne & Cheese.

Driving down to Dover the day before was a good move, after a wet and windy night (and that was just Geoff) we went into the camp site cafe for a full English breakfast and the best cup of tea I’ve ever tasted.

After a quick pootle around Dover town centre we met up with four Bond Bugs (Driven by Jeff, Rory, Ivan and Richard) at the Ferry car park and tickets in hand we boarded the ferry. Jeff had booked us all on the ferry and done so in Club Class, as a result we were offered a welcoming glass of champagne which went down rather nicely. On board we also had a Ploughmans lunch though this seemed to consist of a few bits of lettuce, two pickled onions that make you pull daft faces and 19 tons of cheese provided in two rather large slabs on each plate.

One hour later after our champagne merryment and cheese overload, the ferry pulled into a rather dull and wet Calais. The fact none of us could find our cars was actually quite worrying, here we are embarking on a 4,000 mile journey and we can’t find where the car was parked.

Driving through France tickled Geoff no end and his pronounciation of French place names was most amusing. I had to remind him a few times that folks drive on the left over here though currently he is sulking as his phone doesn’t work over here . A battle between Geoff, Rory and the French speaking machines at the petrol station prooved a saga though my pigeon French came in useful in guessing what the machine was actually saving and what to press. It gave us petrol anyway.

On the roads, four Bond Bugs and a blue Reliant Robin are causing a lot of interest, People are driving passed smiling, waving, tooting, taking photos and almost causing accidents by looking at us and not the car in front.

Jeff has given us all walky talkies so we can communicate, they are good when we are close together but a lot of the time its a bit like listening to Norman Collier, “Hello ab ib eb fast and think ib ob gonna need a ibble obble eb ib ob”

Today has been good though we have driven through France and Belgium and we reached the Netherlands for around 9pm. That itself proved interesting as due to a rally most roads were closed. So we all followed Rory whos Sat Nav proceeded to take us down a cycle path, much to the bewilderment of those cycling along.

At the moment we are all hungry as over here everywhere seems to shut up shop really early … so it’s half a Mars Bar each for dinner.

Elvis.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at 11:47 pm and is filed under The Journey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.