Away we go..............

Today's route

Start Place: Camberley, UK (home)

Mileage:63102

Time: 11:30am (ish)

So, here we go then – just left the house and currently heading down the M3 on our way to Dover. We did quite well – set a leaving time of 11:45am, and we actually left at 11:30 – admitedly we did have to go back home after visiting Halfords (to buy a bike lock) because I had left my favourite top on the line to dry, and hadn't taken it in – but, you know, these things happen right?

The van is packed to the hilt. Not in a “spilling over” kind of way – but definitely in a “made use of all available space” kind of way. I thought we were going to have loads of room – after putting everything but the clothes in yesterday it was looking pretty good, but once the clothes went in – crowded!

On the clothes, we have a box each – one of those fold down ones – and the rule was one box each. Well, Jon managed that – me, well – I've got the box of clothes, plus a bag of underwear and a 'special' bag of running kit :) It's much more difficult when your a girl – you need so much more in the way of clothes!!

We bought an inverter for the van – so that we can power up the laptop from the cigarette lighter as we go, so far so good I say.

What else?

Well, last night we went to Guilfest and that was fantastic. Well, to be a bit more specific – A-ha were fantastic. I can't believe how close we were (Jon was very understanding) and how lovely Morten Harket still is :) Sad. I know.

What do you know – on the M25 and there is a traffic jam! It's Sunday, where are all these people going???? I don't like the jam though – gives me something to panic about (missing our 1515 ferry) – like I need anything else !

So, we got the ferry and arrived in Calais at about 17:45 local time – now we were really doing it!! Our plan is to make it down to Morzine in time for the Thursday stage of the Tour de France – so that really means not too much hanging around in the north, and more driving.

It's one of the things we keep saying – we mustn't spend our whole time driving – because it is really easy to do that.

Anyway, we headed south, flicking cherry stones out of the windows as we went, and were striking for the Aire de Camping Car shown in our book at Caudry. We had no idea what it would be like – but the book said it would be free, and this is always a good thing! So, we rock into Caudry, we drive round a few times (much to the amusement of the locals – we are quite a novelty I think) and eventually we head back out of town to where we saw a map at the side of the road. While we are peering at the map a chap on the other side of the road called over and asked if we wanted any help – and with a bit of pointing, a bit of bad french (us) and bad english (him) we managed to point out where we wanted to be and he told us how to get there! How lovely, and really unexpected, that someone took so much trouble to help us out. Nice.

So, the Aire at Caudry – Fimotel. Well, if I tell you that Fimotel is a sort of Hotel that, bizarrely, is completely closed on a Sunday night, and that the place to 'camp' is a fenced enclosure just big enough for about 8 vans – then probably you are getting the idea. The book lead us to believe that there would be some facilities – the usual stuff (apparently) water, waste disposal, toilets and electricity – all for free. Unfortunately there was nothing, apart from some slightly weird dutch campers with a HUGE dog, and a mangy cat. Still, it didn't really matter, we are pretty much self sufficient (we do have a Porta-Potti after all) and all we wanted to do by then (9pm) was have dinner and go to bed.

So we did.

First try out for the silver screens – or thermo-mats as I believe they are officially known :) Idea was that they would help stop us heating up so much in the morning – but they had the added bonus of making the van pretty dark inside, which was great.