Day 90 - Home to Dunkirk - A long journey

The blog is a little later than usual as while I was writing it my PC suffered a crash and as my save policy is pretty rubbish I lost all that I had typed, a little annoying as I had got a fair way through the blog.  So it is start again time.

This week is a little different as for the first time since March, on one of my travel weeks I am not flying.  This week it is back to Dunkirk and Luxembourg but I was planning to drive.  I did think I would be a little nervous about setting off not due to the length of the drive as I have driven further but today I would be going through the channel tunnel which would be the first time I have driven there and secondly it would also be the first time I had driven on the right with a left hand drive car.

But as the time for setting off arrived, just after 06:00 I was perfectly OK and hit the road.  I had left plenty of time as I would be travelling right through the rush hour with my first duty to pick up a UK colleague from Luton as he was going to park his car there and we do the rest of the journey together.  This would be at 12:00 midday so I had plenty of time in case of any hold ups.  I suppose it was due to the kids holidays and less traffic on the road but there was nothing more than a few decreases of speed and by 09:00 I was at Watford Gap and decided to pull in for a coffee and a pit stop.  I am not one that raves about Costa’s or Starbuck’s coffee and do not have them too often, mainly due to the price but you have to admit when you get one they are decidedly nicer than a McDonalds attempt at making a hot drink.  On this occasion I had a Costa and really enjoyed it as I sat there in the service station constantly looking at my watch and worrying about the amount of time I had been parked.  Since my fine for overstaying my welcome by a few minutes over the two hours during the night at the services just outside Stanstead Airport, I am now worried about how long I have been in the parking and have to admit that I stayed a lot less than I would have done normally and carried on my journey.  This also meant that I was progressing ahead of schedule and decided that Newton Pagnall would be my next stop not that I wanted any more coffee but because I needed to not arrive too early in Luton as I imagined there would be no where for me to park as I waited for my colleague.  As I sat perched in the open hatchback of my car enjoying the sun and doing a few emails by UK colleague appeared and we took the chance to load my car with his bags before travelling on alone with me following him.  We deposited his car at Luton and we continued together toward Folkstone and the tunnel entrance.

It was quite strange at the tunnel as we arrived and I drove to a self service check in to which I entered my details, we were quite early and offered the 15:06 instead of the 16:20 we had booked.  We took the earlier train and proceeded to the terminal place where you could get out and get food etc.  My colleague obtained some food and drink refreshment and I checked the departure board at which they were asking for our train passengers to start boarding with final boarding in 22 minutes.  So we got back to the car and started to make our way around to the train following the other travellers and the signs.  At this point I thought I would be put in a queue for the train we had booked but we were waved through on and on and eventually we were put into the train queue and boarded the train which then departed at 14:45 ish.  I have no idea if I did wrong but we ended up in France a good hour ahead of our schedule and we were off down the road with my colleague constantly saying, you side of the car has to be near the gutter and keep right.  I think he was more nervous than me.  We were soon onto the motorway and soon at the supermarket in Mardyck where he went in to get supplies for the night.  I had been clever and got mine from Tesco the night before so could sit in the car and enjoy the sun and of course look after the bags whilst he fought the French shoppers.  This took him so long when he returned I was fast asleep.

After that it was on to the hotel and to catch up on an awful lot of work that I had missed and the rest of the evening was spent like that before it was time for bed.