Friday 24/7

The original plan was for us to set-off on Saturday 25/7, early in the morning, but Simon blagged the Friday afternoon off work so we decided to leave on Friday afternoon and spend the night at the GRD Bikeloft, motto ‘Peace, Love and Self-Service’, near Ostend. This would give us a bit of a headstart for our tour and we wouldn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn.

We were supposed to meet at 14.30 to head for the Tunnel which, of course, didn’t happen. Rod made us half an hour late because he’d gone to Brighton. Then, when we had to stop on the M23 for him to put his waterproofs on, he discovered he’d got the mobile that Mrs Thompson was supposed to have. That meant we had to go to the Gatwick junction and turn round and go back to Maidenbower to give Ruben the phone for his mum.

Then the heavens opened! The volume of water around was just ludicrous, with cagers dawdling in all three lanes - either because they couldn’t cope with the spray or because they were watching the lightning. This storm followed us around from Gatwick to Ashford, with appallingly slow traffic the whole way. At one point, on the M20, the drops were about an inch across and felt like hailstones when they hit you. In some places there were nearly six inches of water running down the roadway. Of course, there was the wonderful experience of the moments when water just got passed your jacket zip, trickled down and through your boots and finally assaulted the back of your neck.

In a way, it was alright that we had such rubbish conditions at the start as it is unlikely that we could have worse weather while we’re away.

Needless to say, we missed our shuttle and had to wait about 25 minutes to board one. When we arrived at the Bikeloft we discovered we’d got a double, not a twin, room. Of course, this made Simon very excitable but Rod put his foot down and we ended up sleeping on camp beds in the 25 bed dormitory - nice! We had plenty of Stella and Simon was mesmerised by the ‘Look and Cook’ interactive kitchen. Initially it was the number of microwaves that got him going, but once he’d experienced the Auto-fryers he was as high as a kite. Not only did we have hotdogs with ‘auto-fried’ chips, we then had to have ‘auto fried’ prawn spring rolls and ‘auto-fried‘ bitter ballen. If you’ve never tried bitter ballen, don’t, they are absolute sh*te!