We’re Off! Grrr!

So, we’re off to France.We’re only going for a few days – more of a break than a fully fledged holiday really. We love France and feel very comfprtable in her countryside and towns. Hubby loves driving and I’m really happy in the car doing the crossword or now with my dongle, tweeting or blogging when the networks are aligned!

We always use the shuttle so the plan was to travel to Dover, stopping for a ‘ holiday’ coffee and tiffin. We’d go over on the train around lunch time then drive to Hofleur where we will spend the night before travelling down to Tours.

So, the alarm goes off at 6am and I rush around like a mad thing get the tea and get myself ready. We have left plenty of time for the journey, even allowing some traffic on the infamous M25.

We had not got to the main road from our house when hubby asks if I have brought my hat. We seem to have almost everything else in the back but no hat for me. He has become very conscious of his own mortality in recent months after the scare with his blood pressure and cholesterol and this has extended to making sure his ‘hair-less’ head is covered in the sun. I replied that I hadn’t brought it, the forecast was not for it to be too hot and that I’d manage. He wasn’t happy so we turned round to go and get said hat!

Finally we reached the motorway and I checked the times of the train. It was actually half an hour earlier than we had thought but that was fine because we had left plenty of time hadn’t we?

The plan was to stop at Reading Services which are between Junctions 12 and 11(they are in ascending order going East). We had just past Junction 14 when we joined a queue but that was for road works. You know the sort – lots of bollards, reduced speeds and no sign of any work being done.

As we came through, we noticed that we seemed to be joining another queue despite the sign ‘All Clear’ showing on the road. Before long we were stopped with no sign of movement for the few miles we could see ahead. We turned the radio on to see if there was a travel update and sure enough, good old 5 Live told us that two lanes of the carriageway had been closed because of a lorry fire!

It took us an hour to get through, passing the lorry which had been sorted out. I was already feeling really stressed but seeing a couple of motorway officials leaning on their car door at the edge of the TWO lanes that had been closed really made me see red. Why do we have to go OTT in these situations?!

We were now behind schedule so had to have a quick toilet stop and grab a take-away coffee rather than a relaxing stay (when I could catch up on twitter). The coffee was boiling hot so it was left for a while. Hubby has a bit of a problem with those lids that you drink out of even when he isn’t driving but as the cup was fairly full I took a chance. MISTAKE! He took a couple of sips and managed to dribble coffee all down his shirt!

At the time of writing we are on the M25 going VERY slowly as people gawp at an accident on the other side of the road.

I will keep you upated!

Apologies for any clerical errors. The sun is shining on the netbook and I can’t see the keyboard!

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