The Journey Home

We both woke up at 8am. We hadn’t had a great nights sleep because the wind was howling around us all night and it just seemed to get worse and worse. Wanda was whistling as the wind ripped around the guttering on the outside and she was rocking about all night. It was so bad we couldn’t keep the fridge alight on gas and the wind just blew through the fridge vents all night which made it cold when we woke up.
As soon as I got up I light the fire and relit the fridge, then we had a couple of coffees in bed while Wanda warmed up.
The wind just seemed to be getting stronger and as we had no shelter at 10am I decided we’d move 3 miles up the road to the centre of gravelines where there was a dump station and gravel car park.
On route we did our last shop in Lidl and brought some pizza from the bakery for the journey home. That would be our dinner on the road.
From Lidl we found the dump station and emptied the grey and black water and then we parked in the gravel car park for the rest of the day.
The wind was still howling but we had a little more protection from a row of trees and the Wi-Fi was good so we put the fire on low, made a cup of tea and put the TV on. We watched a couple of one hour things, tuen had an early dinner at on and then watched 2 movies, then I unplugged the tv to get 30 minutes of sleep in before it was time to leave.
At 5:40pm we left the gravel car park in gravelines and made our way 5 miles down the road to the port of Dunkirk. It was an east drive, even in the dark and we sailed through customs and got to the ticket office and they said we could get the earlier ferry so we decided to do that hoping we don’t get to Dartford before 10pm and hoping that most of the traffic is off of the roads by the time we get off.
After waiting for 20 minutes we were allowed to board and we followed the freight in and parked behind the Lorry’s.This was our first ferry trip with Wanda and so far it was smooth sailing. Once on board we locked Wanda up and went to the upper deck to wave goodbye to France.
Just before 7pm we started moving and once we left the port we were rolling around all over the place. Ellie and I headed to the restaurant and had trouble finding our sea legs and kept bouncing off the walls.
Once inside we both ordered coffees so we could sit on comfy seats but we were even rocking from side to side sitting down, after an hour we both felt quite queezy and decided to go and stand outside at the back of the ferry, it was freezing and so windy that when we stood at the edge we couldn’t catch our breath.
The whole journey took just under 2 hours and just before hitting the dockside the other end they ordered back to our vehicles and we were glad to be back in Wanda with the heaters on.
Now it was the final push of 200 miles back home.
The roads were pretty quiet except for the dartford tunnel were there was a slight queue as always but we only stopped moving for about a minute, then we were back up to speed and leaving the M25 homeward bound on the M11/A11 in no time and we finally got home just before midnight. We had made excellent time.
This has been a great trip. We’ve enjoyed all of the countries we’ve been through except for Germany which we both found quite hostile. We’ve totalled up a fraction less mileage than last year by doing 3,860 miles even though we’ve visited 9 countries. The most we’ve ever visited in one trip, and in all of those countries we never once paid for an overnight park up, we managed to do the whole trip for free which is a first for us but shows it is possible. Wanda has once again done so well and we are so pleased with the modifications we’ve made. The engine remap to give us more torque on the hills and motorways. The solar panels so she can charge when we’re not in her and most of all we are super pleased with the DC/DC charger that allowed us to stay off grid the entire time. Now all we have to do is unpack everything and cover Wanda up for the winter ready for our next trip.Read more