18th September 2009

We took the N1 road out of Paris after first spending about half an hour trying to find a petrol station that would have room for a large van.  It's more difficult than you think, as they won't let you use the truck area, or don't have one, and there are height barriers on all the exits, so you need to be very careful that before you drive in, you can get out again.

It took as about four hours to get to Calais so we arrived at 1:45pm and were able to join the queue of waiting vehicles.  As we had arrived early (we’d originally booked for next Monday) we had to pay an extra €7 which wasn't as bad as we thought it might be.  We made lunch in the van whilst we were on the train, arrived at Folkestone and drove straight to Blackhorse Farm campsite again.

I made a vegetable curry for dinner and I played my DS and went on my laptop.  Paul was ages on the phone to 3 again trying to get the £20 back from the cancelled dongle contract.  I must say it's nice to be in England again, I've had enough of staying on campsites now, and we're both looking forward to part two of our trip next year.  Italy in comfort.

We're off to Luton and Watford to look at two S type Jaguars, hope we can find a decent one.  Then we have to find a suitable property to rent in Tavistock.  Paul has seen a couple but we need to visit the estate agents and register with them before we can arrange a viewing.

I won't be writing in this journal every day, just when interesting events happen like buying the car or finding a house.  I'll start it all again when we commence our trip to Italy next year.

Some Notes on our Final Europe Tour

We’d driven another 2,300 miles, stopped in some really nice campsites, seen a lot of Germany and a bit of Austria and also had to suffer the state of some of the French campsites.
We met a lot of really interesting people.  Of all the nationalities we met, the Dutch came out tops as the most friendly, and the most accepting of us Brits.  The Germans were also nice but as I couldn't speak their language, I felt less comfortable with them.  The Dutch have to speak good English because nobody else in Europe speaks Dutch.  Ha ha!