DAY 9

Day 9 – and another 4 Countries to cover!

Today saw us leave our Hotel in the Netherlands at a leisurely 10.30am (due to the late night we had updating the web page, and the long days’ driving, we were just a tad tired!)

The hotel we stayed in last night had the most incredibly long corridors – with rooms hanging off everywhere…

Our view out of the bedroom window was slightly less scenic than usual, however it was none the less most interesting!

…I was slightly concerned when a plane landed at around 7am, causing the entire hotel room to shake, but nothing fell off the ceiling, so I guess its normal right?

We exited Holland fairly soon after leaving the hotel, and soon found ourselves crossing the Belgium border for the first time this trip…..

We spent the next 160 miles driving pleasant if some what boring Belgium roads, with nothing but the occasional Glider to keep us awake….

We re-entered France at around 1.30pm, stopped for some petrol – (alas, only common-all garden 98 Octane in France.. its still better than Jersey though!)

We decided to drive straight to the Channel Tunnel and as we had arrived so early, thought we’d see if we could get over to the UK a day early, to save having a ridiculously early start tomorrow morning.

This was absolutely fine with the Chunnel authorities, and we boarded the train 10 minutes later… it really is simple!

We familiarized ourselves with the safety instructions….

… and with-in ten minutes we were heading under the Channel – a novel but very exciting experience for us both…..

30 minutes later, we were back in the UK – how simple was that?! Now why can’t we have a Tunnel from Jersey to the UK????

We had to constantly remind ourselves to drive on the left, although we were never quite sure which language we should be speaking in! If in doubt, try them all!

After a stop for food at Maidstone services, we finally got on the road for our Silverstone guest house at around 4pm, where we joined the wondrous heavy UK traffic for the next few hours on the M25 (aka the worlds biggest car-park!), finally getting to our accomodation around 7pm!

We’re keeping this update quite short as our Hosts have very generously let us plug the laptop into their phone-line, so we’re sat in their lounge feeling a bit in the way!

However, we couldn’t let you all down now could we?!

Tomorrow Ben should be with us by around 7.30am, and we’re going to make our way to Silverstone race track for the third and final part of our European trip! First Formula 1 practice is at 8.30am, so if all goes to plan, we’ll be settled down with strong coffee ready for the off!

So for now, we’ll bid you an English “Good-bye”, until the next exciting instalment!

Garry and Mike