Mission Control

Our little secret:

When meeting this happy travelling band people usually remark upon our organisational skills, attention to detail and ability to forward plan. Anyone who saw the Lady R and I sitting, with fingers crossed, on Tuesday morning awaiting the results of Fifi's MOT would stand in awe of our foresight and meticulosity (yes, I just made that up).

The fact that we started the trip on Monday am with a Peugeot 107 and finished Monday pm with a camper van is neither here nor there because we have a confession to make...

It is an irrefutable fact that every NASA space crew has a team of scientists to offer expert advice, each Formula 1 team has a pitstop crew, every Tour De France equip has a back up staff. We stand side by side with these greats, with our expansive one man support system. We have Mission Control.

Now on discovering their other half was disappearing for six weeks with a girl friend and her dog, some boyfriends would have labelled themselves 'Mr Abandoned' and stayed at home in a sulk. Douglas did not (much). Instead he has moulded himself into our version of expert scientist.

The future of this camper van is in his hands..

Rule Brittania

After being stuck on the M20 for two hours on Tuesday,  we arrived at the Eurotunnel terminal. Late. It was OK,  they stuck us on the 03.27 one instead. While we wanted, we slept.

Awoke at 02.30, a little bleary eyed to the alarm. Got up and drove onto the Chunnel,  felt quite proud of myself in van.

Betty admired my parking.

Once on board Lady R dismounted to have a little wander round,  take a couple of photos and have a puff on her efag. Then we noticed the rules :

1. No walking between cars

2. No flash photography 

3. No smoking

Ahem. 

With our 100% unblemished success rate at rule following, we kept pretty quiet for the remainder of the journey.  

Glad we weren't the only ones rule breaking...the British 'sorry' came soon enough: 'We apologise for the late running of this service, this was due to immigrants running around the terminal.' 

Seriously. 

Disembarkation went well and we drove off (at 5.30am) to find a place to stay. Our attempts at park-ups went as follows :

Place 1, 5.30am: Madam,  please move along. It is forbidden to park here as someone has broken the barrier and we will now fix it. 

Place 2, 9.30am: Madam, if you park here you will be fined 200€

Place 3, 2pm: Madam,  please reverse your vehicle,  I need to cut the grass. 

Basically we spent the day getting in everyone's way.  

Betty got grumpy because she wanted to sit on the front seat but Lady R had first dibs. I told Betty to get down. Betty growled. 

 Black Betty.

Then in more general flouting of les regles the journey was broken by a spot of tyre and hay bale burning en route 🔥

We circumnavigated and continued on our way.

Disco inferno.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Palatial.

So, adventure 2015:

Travels in Fifi, the 1993 Hymer vehicle which the Lady Rebecca and I are taking on tour.

It didn't start smoothly... after some passport shenanigans on Monday and traffic issues Tuesday, Betty and I arrived in Wootton yesterday evening.

This morning we visited Blenheim Palace.

This contrasts, to some degree to our Palace on Wheels.

Our Palace.

So we're off. Eurotunnel 9pm tonight.