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| Getting tanked up on Sunday |
We were up and leaving Soissons at about nine
on Thursday morning. We were about 15
miles from the A26 motorway which is also known as l’Autoroute d’Anglais as it runs all
the way to Calais and the majority of cars seem to be Brits. It was an easy 150 miles to the tunnel so it didn’t
take too long to get there.
There is a counter in the pet reception area
that counts the number of animals to pass through the tunnel from France to
England starting at midnight each day. We
couldn’t believe that Buddy was the 197th pet through and it wasn’t
even midday. Mind you there was a
constant stream of dogs when we were in the reception area even though the car
park was practically empty when we first arrived.
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| The newly renovated pet reception area at Calais |
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| Who is this sign aimed at? |
After Buddy had his chip and passport checked
we were soon on our way again. We had
booked an open return as we didn’t know when we would be coming back so that
meant we were able to get complimentary food and drinks etc. in the
lounge. One of the trolley dollies (I’ve
no idea what channel tunnel stewardesses are called 😊) took a
shine to Buddy and I had to stop her giving him biscuits.
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| Buddy being good for Nathalie |
After coming out of the tunnel we headed
cross-country to visit friends in Canterbury.
After only 10 minutes we passed a post box, and automatically we both
turned to each other and said ‘GR’. We
had both naturally fallen back into Victorian post boxes even though we had
been away over two months 😊 [GR stands for King George (George Rex to be
precise) and was the cypher used for George V]
Ironically, before we got to Trevor and
Brigitte’s house we actually saw a VR box, just 30 minutes after arriving in
the country! We had a pleasant catch up
with Trevor and Brigitte; Brigitte is French so they were particularly keen
to understand our plans for travelling around France from next year.
Next stop was Reading as we were stopping over
with Lauren (my middle daughter) and Lewis.
My other daughters, Sophie & Polly came around for dinner with their
partners (Yanos & Lochlann).
As it was the day before my birthday they had
prepared a special cake for me. A dinner
plate with artistically arranged squares of chocolate, jam tarts, caramel tarts,
raspberries and clotted cream – my sort of cake 😊
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| My find of cake 😊 |
On Friday morning Catherine (Karen’s eldest
girl) joined us and after lunch all the girls set off for a country house they,
and 14 others, had hired in Herefordshire for Lauren’s hen weekend. We set off for Wendover to spend a night with
Karen’s mum, Ann. We took a back roads
route and each found a new VR box on the way.
Poor Ann gets all our mail and there was
rather a lot as we hadn’t picked any up for three months and we had ordered
quite a few things, including stuff for going to France next year.
Of course, by now, we were getting excited to
be nearly home and we set off on Saturday morning on our last leg, 200 miles up
the M1.
We got back to the boat soon after lunch and
were pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t in too bad a state. The plants were in full bloom when we left
back in August and so we knew they would be dead when we returned with no one looking after them but we rather
thought they would be strewn all over the roof.
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| Back at our mooring for the last couple of months on the Springs branch in Skipton |
The afternoon was spent in warming up the boat
and unloading the car. In the evening we
met up with my youngest brother and my sister to catch up on the latest with my
parents. We went to the Beer Engine
which was only about a minute’s walk away, so we didn’t have to worry about
driving 😉
It was so good to be back in our own bed again
after so long and we did sleep rather well on Saturday night. Buddy was also really pleased to be
home. For a while he was spinning around
on his bed, then running up to us to tell us how happy he was to be home, then
going back to his bed and so on backwards and forwards. Even with the extra hour in bed I still had
to wake him up at 9.30 in the morning!
On Sunday morning Karen went off to run some
errands around Skipton and I took the boat for a cruise to the boatyard. This was all of about four boat lengths so
not one of our longer cruises. Mind you,
it did involve a bit of manoeuvring to get over the other side of the cut to
moor once we had been serviced.
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| Off on the first cruise for 77 days (to the other side of the bridge)! |
I filled up with diesel and water and bought
some more coal – it’s that time of year where we’ll probably have the fire on
constantly for the next four months or so.
Talking about having the fire on constantly, reminds me that I also had
to buy a new chimney; it had split when we lit the fire on our return on
Saturday. It’s not surprising as it
braves all the elements whilst being constantly hot for four or five months a
year. The replacement one is better
quality than the previous so hopefully will last a good deal longer.
In the afternoon, we visited my parents and I
must say that it was good to see that they both looked better than they did when
we last saw them back in August.
Now we’ve been back for 24 hours we’re nicely
relaxed and looking forward to cruising down to the south from Tuesday.
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