Mon 7th April 2008
Peeled back the curtains and thankfully the snow was only a few inches deep. I wouldn’t have even prayed for a school snow day back in Colorado over such a fluttering, but then again this is the UK and snow is treated as more of an oddity than the norm, so we should have known it would be a chaotic morning.
We arrived at the Eurotunnel just under an hour early in hopes of grabbing a quick breakfast before boarding the train, only to discover that the snow had caused a major power outage in the tunnel and they were estimating a 3-hour delay. Somehow this trip didn’t seem to be getting off to the best start. Between the broken fridge, broken oven, a max speed of 50 mph, the worst snowfall of the year and now a 3 hour train delay, perhaps someone was trying to tell us to turn around and beg for our jobs back.
After 3 hours of waiting, they announced we were better off transferring to the ferry. So a quick dash over to Dover and we managed to catch our 9:20am crossing at 2:00pm. Slightly behind schedule, we opted for a campsite in Calais instead of journeying on to Normandy. It’d already been a very long day… what should normally take about 4 hours of effort had just taken us 2 days!
The temperature was still freezing and after parking up in a deserted campsite, we attempted to plug in the mains to switch on the heater. No such luck and the gentleman who directed us to our pitch had disappeared. We quickly cooked up dinner, put our new flashlights to good use fumbling around the van to get the bed set up, then dove under the duvet for what I hope will be the coldest night of the trip!
So at what point does this camping malarkey get fun?
Peeled back the curtains and thankfully the snow was only a few inches deep. I wouldn’t have even prayed for a school snow day back in Colorado over such a fluttering, but then again this is the UK and snow is treated as more of an oddity than the norm, so we should have known it would be a chaotic morning.
We arrived at the Eurotunnel just under an hour early in hopes of grabbing a quick breakfast before boarding the train, only to discover that the snow had caused a major power outage in the tunnel and they were estimating a 3-hour delay. Somehow this trip didn’t seem to be getting off to the best start. Between the broken fridge, broken oven, a max speed of 50 mph, the worst snowfall of the year and now a 3 hour train delay, perhaps someone was trying to tell us to turn around and beg for our jobs back.
After 3 hours of waiting, they announced we were better off transferring to the ferry. So a quick dash over to Dover and we managed to catch our 9:20am crossing at 2:00pm. Slightly behind schedule, we opted for a campsite in Calais instead of journeying on to Normandy. It’d already been a very long day… what should normally take about 4 hours of effort had just taken us 2 days!
The temperature was still freezing and after parking up in a deserted campsite, we attempted to plug in the mains to switch on the heater. No such luck and the gentleman who directed us to our pitch had disappeared. We quickly cooked up dinner, put our new flashlights to good use fumbling around the van to get the bed set up, then dove under the duvet for what I hope will be the coldest night of the trip!
So at what point does this camping malarkey get fun?
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1 comment:
Only Day 2 and I'm already giggling out loud! Funny because Wayne and I LOVE camping although I must admit: Wayne is true Winter Camper. I'm kind of a wimp in that regard. -helen (& wayne)
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