The White Cliffs of Dover

Tuesday September 21st

There was no need to rush today as the boat sailed at midday and it was only a half hour drive to the car ferry terminal. So they had a bit of a sleep in and then got all sorted ready for the trip back to the UK. They arrived down at the terminal in plenty of time and got in the queue. There were not a lot of cars lined up. It turned out to be a very light sailing. Most people were returning home to UK after holiday abroad. Of course there were huge numbers of trucks taking goods across the channel as usual. It was surprisingly sunny and warm.

The boat left on time and Mary drove me up onto the deck and left a rather large space. Normally the man loading the boat would have got her to move me up closer to the car in front, but they were not packing them in as the boat was nowhere near full.


Mary had told the furs and feather brigade that they could all go up on the deck for this sailing which they were pretty excited about. Ber Lin was very excited about going to England but had to have Pania looking after him all the time. They went outside to look at the White Cliffs of Dover when they came into view but couldn’t spot any bluebirds at all. When they got back to the van and told me this I said they had to wait till tomorrow, just you wait and see, which confused the heck out of them all as they pointed out to me that they won’t be there tomorrow.

Mary had to return to TKMaxx in Ashford to get the magnetic tag off the cardigan that the shop assistant had inadvertently left on it seven weeks ago. This was not a problem and she took the opportunity to have trawl and find a few more bargains. Upon reaching the check out, the sales girl asked if she would mind giving her postcode for statistical purposes. Mary replied that she lived a long way away and the computer wouldn’t know her postcode. She said she lived in NZ and the girl said, “Do you have a TKMaxx there?” “No,” said Mary. Well this is what it was all about, finding out where there weren’t any yet, so could she have the post code. She still seemed to want a postcode so Mary gave her 4501 and said it was for Wanganui in NZ and the girl stopped and waited for the rest. “That’s it,” said Mary just four digits. The girl looked puzzled and said it was not recognised. This was of course no surprise to Mary. However the poor girl looked perplexed and gave up. As they left, Mary commented to Alan, “She has no idea at all where New Zealand is!” She must have thought it was some obscure village in England! She is destined to work in a shop for ever, in Ashford with no world view. London would be a long way for her. She probably wouldn’t even know there were white cliffs at Dover.

So it was a nice easy ride back to Sue and Phil’s in Sevenoakes and when Mary had backed me down their narrow drive they both got out and said; “We made it you fantastic little van!” We have been around the block; albeit a rather big one and got back in one piece with only a few very minor dramas. There were over 3,000 extra miles on my clock.

On Saturday, while driving a little faster than usual on the Piage, Mary had detected a worrying noise of metal on metal when applying my brakes and had been driving me very gently and not too fast to get me back to England. It was pretty obvious that my brakes would need looking at before they could move on. So Sue swung into action really fast and made a few phone calls and found a garage that specialised in VW repairs .Mary will need to phone in the morning to see if they can squeeze me in and look at my brakes. So this called for a fairly major unpack and sort out which took a bit of time. The rest of the evening was spent chatting.