Today was a long day, starting at 5.30am for Steven and about 7.30am for me.  Steven was up with the worms for his BNI networking group in Norwich and I couldn’t resist the lure of another hour or so tucked up warm and comfy.

Once I did get up that was it, full steam ahead (so rather glad I had the extra hour or so), firstly stripping the bed to get it in the wash followed by hours of more tidying, washing, sorting, packing and rearranging.

We finally left at 1.30pm which wasn’t quite to our plan of midday but hey ho, there was no physical way we could have been ready to leave before that.

Our plan was to go via IKEA at Lakeside to get a new bin lid which should just take a few minutes, however, with us being pushed for time I proceeded to run around in circles, first through the marketplace and then to the display zone – all in vain I might add as they have discontinued this particular range – typical!  Have to say I was getting somewhat claustrophobic by the time I was finished as there is no quick way out of that place!

Add to that general rushing the worry that when we first went to use Ellies’ facilities en route (i.e. the toilet) we couldn’t get any water through for flushing.  Now in the normal scheme of things this is normal, it normally takes some gurgling, spluttering and a few minutes of waiting for the pipes and boiler to fill themselves up before we get water through.  However, in this instance we could hear the pump running but none of the normal coughing and spluttering was happening.  After 2 calls to possible motorhome dealerships that we could have visited on the way (neither of which were interested in helping us…) I did the usual and Google’d the problem.  Turns out the non-return valve that we’d fitted to stop the gurgling etc was probably stuck so when we stopped at IKEA Steven attended to the pipes while I ran around the store.

Voila, the pipes cleared and we have running water again.

welcome to franceNext stop the Eurotunnel.  So easy, they recognised the number plate, I took a wrong turn and drove around the bus parking, and then we found our correct queue.  The train even departed a few minutes early!  Even better was the first rate WiFi going through which meant I could purchase the winning lottery tickets for the next four weeks before we got to France.

Coming off the chunnel and over the next mile or so (or should that be kilometre now we’re on the continent…) we saw some of the immigrants so desperate to get into the UK just walking along the dual carriageways.  I’m sure I’ll have more to say about that once we’re safely back in blighty.

For our final couple of hours of driving for the day, we headed towards Le Treport which is near where we met up with Julie & Jason last year.  However, after getting on the toll road instead of avoiding it, we rethought that idea and ended up in a little place called Mesnieres en Bray (N49 45.987′, E001 22.864′) for our first evening of this little adventure.