099 - mon 07 aug - calais/dover/london... travelodg

we caught a taxi from our dodgy hotel to the ferry terminal very early in the morning. maybe its because there are two of us, or maybe its because we don't take taxis very much, but every time we get in one it feels like an amazing race moment.

we picked up our car from the citroen office. it was shiny and pretty (that didn't last long). we mentally prepared ourselves to drive a car for the first time in three months, sitting on what is for us the wrong side of the car. left hand drive. it was a wobbly but mercifully short drive to get the car onto the ferry, and we were soon back on our way to the uk.

then we drove from dover up to london. driving in to and out of london was not a fun experience, though it probably wasn't as bad as i might have thought. we made it to our old house, where someone had already moved in to our recently vacated room (! - cheap accommodation turnover is very high in london). we picked up all of our accumulated camping stuff, said goodbye to our friendly hosts and the dog bella and the cat pinky and the other cat whose name we never found out because they kind of hate that one.. then we dropped some other stuff off with ej and daniel before buggering the hell off out of london.

we got on the motorway and drove drove drove. after some unsuccessful attempts to find somewhere to stay in sheffield for the night, and being truly exhausted from our first day on the road, we ended up crashing (as in sleep, not a car crash) at a motorway travelodge for the night where we had a bottle of wine and dodgy motorway salads for dinner. we watched some dodgy english tv (as if we hadn't done that enough in the last six weeks) - and resolved to find a camping ground tomorrow night in york.

click here for photos