The cars at Dover waiting to board
So finally last Friday afternoon we found ourselves negotiating our way round a crowded M25, Fatrat (aka Nick) in his dirty Elise and myself in my (gleaming) black Mazda turbo. The motorway was busy all the way to Dover, by which time we were split up, Nick without his ticket as I had it! Being the nice chap I am I waited so he could board too. We were travelling on the new Dover to Bolougne seacat with a reputed journey time of only an hour. This was obviously excluding the huge amount of time loading the vehicles on - quite a farce with each vehicle having to turn around on the boat before parking up. Never seen anything like it. Still once going, the crossing was fast and smooth.
On board we worked out how to use the short wave radios we had bought to communicate with each other and planned the route to our weekend stop over, the Manoir Gourlay not far from Abbeville. With darkness approaching we set off and after leaving the autoroute got completely lost in the French countryside. Having no sat nav between us we ended up using the google maps on my Crackberry to find our way to the Manoir, arriving there around 11.30pm.
A house party of Bacchanalian proportions greeted us , with the guests and host all sat round a table littered with half empty wine bottles. Our hosts, David and Karen very hospitable but a bit bonkers looked after us with lots of cheese (chunk it up we were told!) and a very drinkable vin rouge. We were eventually shown our rooms and bed at around 1am!
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