“Ring Ring, Ring Ring” went the phone. It was Ajay telling us that our departure on the Europe Road Trip had been delayed over an hour because he had to submit some work before he could go on holiday. Last minute planning at it’s finest.
So our departure point had changed, we were due to set off from Warwick services to get to Dover for an early ferry. Now Ajay wanted us to meet him in Gaydon.
When we finally set off down the M40 it was 11am and getting hot.
Ravi called out over the walkie talkies we were using to stay in touch between the cars,
“Are we stopping before we get to the ferry?”
“No”, came my response, “we don’t have time.”
“We need to find a Halfords or something before the ferry to reattach my number plate” Ajay chimed in.
“Our ETA is looking pretty bad so lets get something on the other side for your plate” I said.
I’m pretty tired, if I smash into you, you’ll know why” he responded back.
Ravi then stated that he needed water, tough luck I thought, he’s going to have to wait till we get to the ferry, he should have prepared better.
As my speedometer didn’t work very well, Ajay informed me that I had broken the speed limit, I looked down at the speedometer reading, 160mph, well that’s defiantly broken then. Turns out I was around half that speed and was supposed to be driving economically, this came back to bite me later.
As we arrived at the ferry port in Dover, suddenly Ajay revealed he didn’t know where he was going and didn’t print any of the papers out! After a bit of cursing over the radios I took the lead, and went through the border checks. We then got stopped at the security search area and our cars checked out, they did a quick swipe of our hands to check for anything dodgy. This gave us a chance to get out of the cars and stretch a little. Even the security staff laughed when we joked that they could take their time because its really hot in the cars and mine did not have air conditioning.
“I’ll get you in on an earlier ferry” said the check in staff member.
Once on the ferry we went straight for the shop as Ajay and Ravi had forgotten to get the essentials, such as a GB sticker, breathalysers and headlight deflectors, have a look at our essential items for a Europe road trip here.
We then spent some of the time taking photos from the open deck of the ferry before we decided it is way too windy and went back inside. A quick toilet break and we were ready to go. We got to the cars and realised a lot of passengers forgot to turn off their movement sensing alarms. The chorus of alarms were quite loud inside the ferry as the sounds bounced off the metal walls. The Mk 1 MX5s we had didn’t have alarms in their specifications.
As we left the ferry into the Calais port, Ajay started getting excited that we were in France and driving on the other side of the road. The novelty wore off quickly. We had to get to our hotel in Lille, Ajay had booked us into the Ibis budget.
My dodgy speedometer meant we were getting overtaken by lorries, but we had decided to take our time. We headed to Lille via Dunkirk at a nice cruise. I looked down at my fuel gauge and realised that it was going to be a tight stretch to Lille if we got caught in a traffic jam. We then hit a traffic jam and I decided not to risk it and get fuel. “Boy’s, I’m running low, we need fuel” I call out. “We’re ok” came the response back. Damn, I shouldn’t have driven quickly on the UK motorway.
After a detour for petrol and because Ravi started getting tired and hungry, we headed back towards Lille. Ajay had inadvertently put the wrong Ibis Hotel into his sat nav. Once we arrived at the correct hotel (Hotel ibis Budget Lille Centre) we parked in the secure underground car park which has a steep entrance and went to check in.
I took the top bunk in the hotel room and promptly hit my head on the ceiling, beware there isn’t a lot of room, especially if you are 6 foot tall like myself.
As it was late, we didn’t go out to dinner but stayed in the hotel and downloaded the videos onto the back up hard drives and laptops.
The distance traveled on the first day was approximately 300 miles which took us around 7 hours to complete.
First day of the trip completed, watch the short video which includes day 1 and 2. Stay tuned for day 2 when we go to Luxembourg City.
Long Way There 