(10) The Journey Home (part 2)

(25) Into Holland 🇳🇱 Thursday 1st August

So this was another travel day. We left our slightly dodgy campsite and drove for a while before stopping in one of the last towns in Germany, where we went to a Netto and had a nice coffee and cake. We felt we had to buy a few German beers, some German wine to take home, and Prosecco to take to celebrate seeing friends this evening.

We travelled on into the Netherlands, where it was even flatter and the fields seem to mostly contain maze or solar panels! We were surprised at one point by unexpected torrential rain, which slowed us down for awhile but then it stopped. We had some lunch in a camper parking place at services (in our camper)

We found our new campsite outside Dordrecht, and it is lovely. Other campers friendly, we even parked beside another Chausson.

My friend Bruce, who I trained at St John’s with, had invited us to dinner at his house. He kindly came to meet us (on his bike) so we could negotiate public transport together. Actually it was very easy to use the train, just tap on and off with a credit card. We went 2 stops and then a short walk to his lovely house, where Lauretta was waiting with a lovely dinner prepared for us.

It was lovely to be in a house for a change, first time for over three weeks. Their house is beautiful, and although it isn’t large, it still has room for an upright piano and a grand piano (Lauretta is a concert pianist). Their two dogs added to the fun too.

After dinner Bruce walked us back to the station, then we found our way back to the campsite (slightly shorter route haha!)

(26) Holland 🇳🇱 (Sean writing)

[Summary - Busy day in Dordrecht. Mozzy night]

Yesterday, Friday, the 2nd of August. We walked from our campsite to the station (finding a much quicker route than Bruce had done). We were early for the train and so had a look round the local shops before jumping on the train one stop into the city centre. We walked from the station further and further into the old city which got more and more interesting and beautiful as we went along. We had an hour to kill so we visited the local market. I bought some cheese and wondered around looking at the beautiful buildings. And brought waffles for our children, then found the café that we had organised to meet Bruce and Loretta at and had a beer: the first of many! They arrived and we sat in a row outside the café and enjoyed the sunshine and the beer. We then had we had a great debate about where to go for lunch, as Lauretta had said that pancakes were a really typical Dutch meal found in Holland, so we found our way eventually to a restaurant that served them! Maureen, Lauretta and I all had pancakes with cheese and bacon, but gluten-free Bruce had something else which he also said is very exciting and typically Dutch.

We were met by a friend of theirs called Henk who took us to the Old Catholic secret church, which was very interesting. We then had enough time to quickly walk to the Cathedral church where he was determined to give us a detailed guided tour. This was very interesting, including a visit to a small chapel where there was definitely a sense of a thin space. We found out about the synod of Dordrecht, and solid gold chalice & patten!

After this, we were all exhausted and so went for a soft drink at another café. We made our farewell to Loretta and Bruce and Henk and set off to find somewhere to eat eat.

This took some time! We were rather tired and fed up at this point but eventually found a nice place down at the main waterfront. Unfortunately the service was terrible and we waited an hour and 40 minutes for our dinner to arrive. Sean definitely got Hangry! On the way, by the way, we bumped into Lauretta and Bruce who had called the water taxi and then found it wouldn’t take them home so they had to come back! The evening ended very nicely with a beautiful sunset and then a cheeky Bolt taxi back to the campsite. Unfortunately, this was the start of a hideous night. It was very very humid and unknown to us 1 million mosquitoes had managed to get into the camper. I blame Maureen! Well, they mostly ate Maureen but when she had finally hidden herself, they turned on Sean. We definitely spent quite a lot of the night with the lights on hunting mosquitoes and squashing them... and then being disgusted by the blood all over our hands, which was our blood which they had sucked out of us. And now we both have lots of itchy mozzie bites (Maureen counted about 35!).

(27) Holland 🇳🇱 Belgium 🇧🇪 France 🇫🇷 (Sean writing)

We started the day in the campsite in Dordrecht. 🇳🇱 We woke up very late having had a terrible night with mosquitoes. We set off and drove through very flat countryside and lots of queues especially around Antwerp. 

We left and entered Belgium 🇧🇪 where we stopped at a service station which was nearly as bad as the one we stopped at on the way out! However they sold very nice coffee and apricot tart. 

We drove on until we came into France. 🇫🇷 We then left the motorway and went to the big supermarket Auchan, and bought very large numbers of bottles of wine. We then drove to our campsite and had a little excitement when we encountered a bridge that was too low for the camper to go under. After some reversing and thankfully very uncomplaining French drivers reversing then waiting patiently, we were able to turn round and arrive at a rather damp campsite. It’s only 20 minutes from Calais. We drank wine and ate baguettes with Norwegian 🇳🇴 Danish 🇩🇰 and German 🇩🇪 cheese. We played Quiddler and Maureen was miraculously the winner! Unfortunately we could not get the electricity connected, so had to use the gas which made most things work, but slightly annoying not to have all the electric as well. 

Even more annoying while we were trying to charge a phone from the socket that worked from the leisure battery, something fused and that stopped working and the light over the kitchen stopped working. We tried various fixes but to no avail. Worse still, the other thing on that socket was the bed that came down from the ceiling, which we had been sleeping on every night this month. On discovering that we could not get it to work, we had to remember how to set up the bottom bed, which we discovered was not as comfortable as the other one! 

We searched for and killed quite a few mozzies before bed, but a couple had escaped, so we were up in the night hunting them as well! Also, a contender for worst facilities, the loo roles hadn’t run out -there just were none!

Only compensation was having croissants for breakfast in bed - we were in France after all!

(28) France to England: France 🇫🇷 United Kingdom 🇬🇧

We woke up and drove to Calais (carefully avoiding the low Bridge this time). The process of boarding for P&O ferry was very straightforward. We had a wait in the quite nice service station, then had a very comfortable crossing. Our placement in the queues meant that we were one of the first cars off the ferry which made for a good start driving back into England. Little did we know that after admiring the beautiful rolling hills of England, we would get stuck in significant hours of queueing on M6 & M25! Waze eventually found us a slightly less bad route!

As we drove on the A303 we were reminded of when we lived in Surrey. We passed Stonehenge, and near Yeovil we drove into the little village of Lower Odcombe to our campsite behind the Masons Arms pub. Fortunately we asked what time they served food, as the answer was 6.30pm, and now it was 10 past!

So we dumped the camper on a beautiful level grassy site, plugged in electric, changed the fridge over (it works on electric, gas, or the leisure battery) and went to the pub!

It was gloriously English 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 😂😂!

Sean got his pint, and a massive tasty beef Sunday roast dinner, and I had posh fish and chips! (Facilities good except showers needed pushing button all time!!)

After relaxing a bit, we did some sorting and repacking ready to move out of Gordon - this was our last night in our home for a month (unfortunately still on the uncomfortable lower bed)!

(29) HOME ❤️❤️ (Sean writing) 5th August 2024 So we left the Mason‘s arms (after a nice coffee in the bar) and found an easier route out. It was only an hours drive to Wellington where we were to drop off the camper. It turned out that fixing the bed was very easy to do if you have the right fuse (which we didn't!). Steve inspected the damage from the accident in Germany and was pleased to see that it wasn’t as bad as he had imagined. We of course spent much time telling him that story, but also talked about some of the wonderful places that Gordon had been. Maureen in fact had made a little montage of photos of the different campsites that Gordon had been parked in and had sent it to them.

After the handover we finally jumped into our now very full car and set off back to Nottingham. It was weird being in an automatic that doesn’t have a key or a handbrake! Both Maureen and I were scrabbling to change gears with a non-existent clutch and a non-existent gearstick! The journey was rather stop and start -as normal- on the M5.

We were doing our daily 'Lectio' prayer reflection and it led us to think about our friend J. Ten minutes later we were in the fabulous Gloucester service station having a cup of tea and something to eat, when who should we meet there but J! She had been on holiday with her family and was also on her way back to Nottingham. "God-incidence"?

We drove and finally arrived home at about 6 o’clock. We were very tired and did as much unpacking of the car as we could, drank some wine and went to bed in our very enormous (so it seemed) House. The kitchen is considerably bigger than the whole area of the camper we've been living in for a month!

We were very happy to be back in our bed.

The showers and toilet facilities at 17 Robin Hood Chase are rather good! ✅ 👍 😉 😁

Lovely flowers from our garden in a vase to welcome us home.

Getting back to reality gradually with a family meal out for Matt's birthday, then back to grand-parenting duties! Maureen's sabbatical ends next week! 😢