Tonight we are under the stars in Northern France on our first adventure abroad in our trooper of a motorhome, Ellie.

Thursday traveled from Norwich to Brighton the long way due to a big load of congestion on the M11 and a mighty 6 hours later (165 miles) we arrived in Rottingdean to visit a friend and colleague of mine for the evening.

It was 30 degrees for most of the journey and Ellie even had to supplement her cooling with a fan but she did admirably, however Steven & I were flagging by the time we got to the south coast and the cool sea air was very welcome indeed.

Our friend has 4 beautiful cats and a very adorable, if slobbery, proper British bull dog called Bille.  One of the cats, Isobel, insisted on morning cuddles and amused us by drinking from our glasses before trying to rub them over.

Friday started with cloud and rain and a visit to Wetherspoons at Brighton Marina, lovely job for breakfast.  Then I spent the day in a great workshop with Mark Walsh who teaches embodiment which is all about getting out of your head and back to the body realising the the body isn’t an “it” like a car or something, but is actually part and all of us – very inspiring stuff although I could have done with another week of it to really understand it more as it’s such a vast subject.

Steven spent the day in Wetherspoons attached to their intermittent wifi trying to do some work.

Friday night we started along the coast road towards Dover and just as we were coming into Hastings I spotted some motorhomes parked up on a beautiful seafront, so quick thinking we nipped in, parked up and started on dinner.  Or rather I started on dinner while Mr G wandered off to check the overnight restrictions and ended up talking to a fellow ‘homer.

Sunset was pretty gorgeous and this morning we were up at 6 to make moves onto Dover and got to see the sunrise aswell.

Sunrise at Hastings - looking west

Sunrise at Hastings - looking east

We arrived at Dover an hour early so had breakfast and Ellie got inspected by some other motorhomers, I did wonder whether they were going to try lifting her tyres to look at the hoofs.  Although I’m one to talk as I love looking around other peoples homes whether mobile or brick!

A few hours later and we’re rolling off onto French soil and finally driving on the right side of the road for a Left hand drive, can’t say I really noticed much difference but then we are pretty used to driving both ways which is handy.

We quickly ventured off the motorway and into numerous quaint French villages nestling in rolling hills similar to the Cotswolds.

Another couple of hours later and we are hunting for somewhere to stay overnight, first one was a no-go, absolutely full and services weren’t working so we carried on and got to Le Treport.  Beautiful site on the top of the white cliffs and even better as we were pulling into the parking area another British couple were leaving and passed us their parking ticket which means we can stay until tomorrow lunchtime for free – I love it when lady luck shines 🙂

We found a new religion a few months back. Its called Dave… We are hoping to meet up with Dave’s owners, Julie & Jason from OurTour in the next couple of days as they travel back to the UK after nearly 2 years on the road (minus 2 weeks last autumn). Dave is a Hymer motorhome and we have been following their daily exploits for the past 6 months and hope to follow in their footsteps and tyre tracks.  It’s probably going to be one of those awkward celeb moments when you feel like know them and they’re your new best friends and they’re like “who are you again????”.

Have no idea where we are going tomorrow – guess we’ll figure that out over breakfast!