We Do Adventure

Dunkirk is more famous as a place for getting off the continent than onto to it. However it’s apparently a cheaper destination than Calais so at 4am our small ferry nosed its way out of Dover into one of the world’s busiest waterways for the short trip across the Channel. It’s been the better part of ten years since I’ve been on a ferry. I never thought I’d use the Tunnel, let alone recommend other to, but it is so quick and easy. But it has no magic. You miss leaving and there’s no great sense of arrival. You can’t walk out on deck at 5am to survey the view and talk to your video camera! I not sure why I opted for a particularly stodgy English breakfast as we gently swayed across the mercifully calm waters. As last meals go it was particularly poor, although perhaps comfortingly reminiscent of school dinners back in the day before Jamie Oliver got his hands on them! With this laying heavy in my stomach I stretched out on the bench seating in the cafeteria and attempted sleep. Sleep in...

I need to tell tales from our travels before I forget. I know we made the road trip movie but that doesn't go so far as to even scratch the surface of the real experience - sorry! The trip could have been a feature film, although probably more art-house movie than box-office blockbuster. So I'm going to attempt to tell a few select tales here over the next couple of weeks. I will attempt to be truthful and not to embellish the story, but then there was that favourite quote from 'A Knight's Tale': I'm a writer, I give the truth scope! Starting at the beginning has long been recognised as the very best place to start and I shall take as my beginning the moment I laid eyes on Boris's van. It was then that leaving was a truly imminent reality. All I knew up to that point was Boris has a long wheel base, hi-top van. No make or model. What appeared on my parents drive was an all-too-familiar white Transit - I've driven a similar one around Europe - with some v...