Day 113 - Home to Luxembourg - The long drive

Back on the road again, I think there is a song along those lines.  Anyway it was back on the road but this time with a vengeance.  The plan was to travel to Nottingham to pick up a colleague and then onward to the Channel Tunnel and finally to Luxembourg.  A long journey in anyone’s book.

My day started at 4.40 a.m. when I left home and headed south on the M18 and M1 to Nottingham, arriving in the small village where my colleague lives just before 6.00 a.m.  After a few sight seeing journeys through the village I found his street and he emerged, bleary eyed from his house.  He was scooped up and we were soon whizzing south on the M1 again.  After about two hours it was stop time and we made a break at the services at Junction 15A of the M1 for some light refreshment, I took some pleasure from having a Costa coffee.  The break was soon over and we were back again heading south.  The road was not that bad as we joined the M25 and made our way to the QE 2 bridge, it was hard to imagine that the country had now returned from holiday as the kids had also started back at school.

The traffic was so light that we finally reached the Tunnel  some 2 hours ahead of schedule so we found an earlier crossing and I was soon watching the excitement of my Nottingham Colleague as he travelled on the tunnel train for the first time.  His little face was a picture of excitement all the way across and only changed back to normal as the light of a French day shone through the Windows.

We were soon off the train and heading along the motorway in the direction of Brussels and finally Luxembourg.  You can probably tell I am trying to drag this out as it was a long journey but probably one of the most uneventful.

The biggest drama came as we entered Luxembourg and I was following the instructions from the Sat Nav only to get them wrong and head south toward France rather than North toward Luxembourg central.  The only thing I said was, “after 527 miles of the journey, this mistake was not what I wanted to do”.

After a brief detour of about 6 miles we were finally heading into Lux centre and we pulled up at the front of the hotel 12 hours and 545 miles later.  That was one road trip.  The only problem with this road trip was that now we had arrived at the hotel, we had to find our rooms and then start work and prepare for tomorrow in the office.

I have to apologise for the poor content in the blog but with the day mainly consisting of sat behind a steering wheel and even the traffic playing its part then there is only so much you can say about tarmac, cars and motorways.

My colleague did offer one suggestion which was, now that we had arrived in Luxembourg, would we like to go for a run into Germany for a look around.  I had to admit the boy is a wheeze.  Needless to say we didn’t and the next few hours were spent working and with the time approaching 11:00 p.m. it is time for a well earned rest, so until tomorrow, night all.