Wednesday 1st July 2009

Home

I make the mistake of suggesting to Kathleen last night, that today we should just drive to the ferry port at Calais and see if we can get on a ferry today. If not we can follow plan B and stay at the Calais Aire or drive to Guinnes just a few miles from Calais. This will suit both of us really, since I know Kathleen is anxious to see the new grandson, Daniel, and I am anxious to ensure I see Gary & Susana before the depart to Houston.

But Kathleen is so enthusiastic, she is out of bed at 06:00 in the morning, this is the earliest she has been out of bed by at least 3 hours for the past 12 weeks! She of course makes enough noise clattering around that although I hold out until 06:30 I am eventually forced to get up too. I should have waited until this morning to make my suggestion.

The journey is uneventful, in her enthusiasm to ensure we get to Calais promptly, she even directs me onto the toll section of motorway and pays the toll.

We are in for an unpleasant surprise when we get to the ferry check in, at about 10:00. We have a return ticket for tomorrow at 09:20 (which cost £75), and based on previous experience with Sea France and Norfolk Line, we would expect to be charged an extra £10-£15 to switch. Wrong!. This time we are travelling with P&O and they want a whopping £65 to allow us to switch. Now I could understand this if we were switching from a really off peak time (like 02:00 in the morning) to a peak time, but we aren’t. Anyway we grudgingly pay up, and resolve not to use P&O again ever!

We stop off for a very pleasant lunch at a small pub just off the M11, and arrive home at 20:00 all we have to do now is unload the wine we have brought back with us, hopefully enough so that we will not have to buy any at UK inflated prices!

Finally now that we are home, and I have access to the lead which someone forgot to pack (plus I thanks to Andy's sterling efforts, the garden looks superb, so I will not have to spend the enxt few days weeding and tidying), I will try and upload some photographs so that you can see the sort of places we visited, so keep watching.

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