Tapp's Travels

Before we catch our boat to Spain we have some stuff to do.

Three months in Australia has left one of us with a bit of washing and ironing!

… and another one of us with a pile of paperwork!  Actually four piles – nicely sorted by our house supervisor.  Thank you Rob!  We have: “circulars and unsolicited mail”; “magazines and general guff”; “actual communication letters”; and “stuff in brown envelopes”.  We have asked the postman not to deliver the fourth category, but he does slip a few in occasionally.

We have eighteen clear days before we ship out to Euroland.  That might be an inappropriate use of the word “clear”!  We pick up our new caravan four days after climbing off the plane from Singapore.  We have four osteopath appointments, three hospital visits, a four day shake-down trip in the caravan to see Jeremy and family.  Plus visits from two sets of caravanning friends.

There were also two haircuts and a choir morning in there somewhere!  There was a “to do list” as long as … well three pages long anyway.  The storage of the caravan needed sorting.  We have 73 people to see.  A visit to the local National Trust property was needed as a break from activities.  The automatic watering system had to be set up and a failed component ordered from Mr Amazon, and fitted.  The caravan storage needed re-sorting and re-sorting several times – and then packing.

Departure date comes round pretty quickly really!

Arriving at Plymouth docks in plenty of time, we shuffle through the emmigration checks and find ourselves at the very front of a queue of caravans.  Promising!  But as we know there is a rule that says loading is at the discretion of the load-master – and he is known to play tricks!  First trick – we are held for an hour looking straight at the loading door.  Then we are called forward.  After four metres or so, they change their minds – reverse us back into the queue between closely packed rows.  Second trick.  But good practise!  In the end we find ourselves in almost exactly the same place as last year – about five units from the front doors.  Right beside the door to stairwell B.  That’ll be good for a rapid exit later!  So he’s run out of tricks at last!

We set off on a very peaceful, calm crossing.  No whales spotted.  Several pods of common dolphins were seen by others, but the nearest I got to spotting an aquatic animal was a gannet – and I’m pretty sure they don’t count.  Every year we notice a reduction of service.  It wasn’t that long ago that wine and canapés were served in the Commodore lounge.  Now they don’t even lock the door to the lounge.  That’s a clear message saying “not much free in here!”  Apart, that is, from a coffee machine.  And that’splumbed and wire in place!  Still, the beds were comfortable once I had worked out how to increase the room temperature from -5°C to a respectable level.  Local management was determined on that point!  Our free breakfast came …

… and went – as did a couple of slices of fruit cake for later.

Then it was time to disembark.  The lift to level 3 from 8 (too many stairs) put us at the very front of the queue waiting for the car-deck doors to open.  Which they do automatically when the ship is docked.  Or in this case didn’t.  For an hour!  Third trick!  Luckily we had the cake and water with us, but sharing this with all the other happy campers stuck in stairwell B meant we only got a few crumbs each.  In the 60 minutes there were about 10 announcements saying that there was a “technical fault” and “escape to Spain would be delayed!”  No s*** Sherlock!

Suddenly.  Click, clunk, squeal.  The doors to the main car-deck sprung open and we were in.  The front door – the way out in front of us – started to open.

Then stopped part way!  Three or four times!  Trick four?  This might not be funny!  There was a lot of banging from a team of escape engineers on the outside tasked with getting us out into the daylight zone.  After another frustrating hour and many more announcements to the effect that reaching dry land was going to be delayed, we got to trick five.  The big one!  The captain was going to turn his ferry round to allow us into Spain out the other door.

But first, in order to meet safety requirements, everybody had to clear the car-decks and go back up to floor 7 or 8.  Excellent.  Anyway, the ship reversed out and redocked the other way round.  We went back to our cars.  The rear doors opened as they should.  And we started to disembark.  Very slowly.  Backwards!

The cars were OK.  Once a bit of space was generated they just turned round and scarpered.  Even the campervans were fairly OK.   But the caravanners had to work a bit harder!  That’ll teach us!  We eventually got going three and a half hours late and there was still half of the main deck to clear before the cars on level 4 could be released.

Immigration was a doddle.  The briefest of passport checks and 50 staffers waving at us frantically to keep going.  They had all been briefed on our likely state of mind.  “They’ll have short fuses, get them out of the docks area!  ASAP!”  No checks for the import of milk and other dairy products, meats, sandwiches or marijuana.  We could have had a field day – but you just can’t predict things like that.  So one of our first tasks will be to go shopping for SOME of the banned items!

The 70 km trip to Camping Colombres went swimmingly.  No dramas.  No road closures.  No missed turns.  Boring really.

Our pitch at Colombres …

… had wonderful views of the northern edge of the Picos mountains.  From our bed …

And as the sun started to set on our first day in Spain …

… we were ready for sleep.