Work :-(

How difficult can it be to sit in a room for 6 hours watching a powerpoint presentation? Aaagh, get me out of here and show me the open road! Brian has a very limited attention span so when we departed the village hall and got on the open road it should have been plain sailing. Unfortunately Brian hasn't quite dovetailed with the satnav so hence a tiresome drive to our overnight stay in a pub car park just outside Dover. First job after breakfast was down to Aldi for supplies, it's the last time we are spending so much on a bottle of wine, £2.99, ridiculous! An early arrival at the port means we depart these shores at 11.15am.

Sunday Night/Monday Morning Feeling

After a gastronomic weekend at Richard's we headed south to deepest Kent this morning. Settling in on the campsite the prospect of work is starting to hit home. We now have that Sunday night/Monday morning feeling, although our first 'job' is to socialise with other campsite assessors at the local pub, so that shouldn't be too arduous. Tomorrow it's a full day's work (10am-4pm) when we will be given all the necessary 'stuff' for our trip.

Suffolk

We are now in Suffolk with Rachel's bro' and family after an extended stay at the motorhome dealer. The list of jobs which needed doing on the van took longer than expected and there was NO WAY we were spending 10 weeks in France without being able to get in through the habitation door! Thankfully (just about) everything got sorted and the plus points were - using the dealers swimming pool and sauna, free bacon butties, cakes and as much tea and coffee we could drink over 2 days, but best of all meeting Anna and Simon (fellow Rapido owners). It was one of those nights when you wake in the morning thinking 'maybe I need to detox', you get the picture! We are really looking forward to our roast beef, washed down with red wine (ok maybe we'll hold on the detox) so as we finish our pre dinner sherry we will close for tonight :-)

First Night, Newark (anag.)

As alcohol is too expensive in England we are a running a bit dry during the early stages of the 'tour'. We brought half a bottle of white (to have with tonight's meal) but what about pre dinner drinkies?! Bri went ratching through the wine cellar and stumbled across the remnants of a beer crate however Rachel struck gold by finding 4 cans of G&T in the back of the fridge :-)

Tour de France - Le Grand Depart

In keeping with the cycle race, our Tour de France has the first few 'stages' on English soil. The Grand Depart is obviously from Carlisle on Thursday with a 200 mile stage to Brownhills at Newark (where we bought Rapi the camping car from). An overnight in their 'aire' and on Friday Rapi will have a list of minor issues attended to. Next post should be Thursday night.

First Attempt at Dot Joining

It should look something like this. The plan being to do a third of the campsites then head off west to visit Amy & Yann, then return to do another batch near Switzerland, have a break and then finish off by heading back towards Calais :-(

Join the Dots

As poor Bramble has left us for the big dog kennel in the sky it now rests on us to continue the blogging, we hope we can do it (& her) justice, although the photographs probably won't have the same 'fun' content!

So, here goes....... we leave CA3 on 24th April and expect to return in early July after joining all the dots in the photo, 44 sites to visit in France plus another 6 in Dumfries and Galloway when we return, a big increase from last year's 28, they must trust us!

We will keep you posted once we set off, watch this space.........