Gravelines - Home

Monday morning and the vet was busy but managed to fit in an appointment for later in the day so we just chilled out back on the aire. We later heard that a Brit Funster parked on the Gravelines aire had been targeted for theft of the valuable bikes he had on the back of his van in the early hours of the morning. We didn't hear anything but from later correspondence he may well have been on the "unofficial" aire.

With Jamie sorted we had another night at Gravelines and on Tuesday had a lazy run up to the Auchan hypermarket at Calais, intending to refuel until we saw the price and decided to wait until the UK where it was cheaper - except we later found it wasn't! A quick stroll around the hypermarket for anything we might have needed then on to the Citie Europ motorhome parking to overnight ready for our booked crossing on the Channel Tunnel in the morning. Not unexpectedly there were around 24 others parked there too.

Early start on a dull and dreary Wednesday morning, foregoing breakfast until we had crossed, hoping to get an earlier train. With Jamie cleared we checked in and were given a 30 min earlier reservation and we proceeded through, having the van properly searched by armed soldiers, and eventually onto the train.

Which didn't pull out on time. Then came an announcement that due to a fuel leak in the car section part of the train had to be evacuated while they dealt with it. Not us but of course it delayed our departure for almost an hour. Frustrating to watch our "booked" train depart ahead of us but it's the first time we've been seriously held up so we're not complaining - at least they made regular announcements with progress.

Once off at Folkestone we called in at the Stop 24 services for breakfast then on to Tesco at Ashford where we were shocked to see the price of diesel; we had no inkling that it had increased by so much! With no alternative we topped up and set off on the long slog north.

Being a weekday it was very busy but we were fortunate in not experiencing any delays, pausing at Peterborough for lunch then going straight through, arriving home about 6.45 pm. We just unloaded the essentials for now and finished off the following day before putting Bertie back into storage until we had a few days clear to do some of the small running repairs and give him a thorough clean and polish.