Wednesday 20th July 2016 - Reading/Dover

Hoorah! ‘E’ day has arrived – the first day of our European adventure. Today we complete the final packing of the car and caravan, load up the bikes and take off for a Dover campsite ready for the ferry to Calais tomorrow morning.
Fred and Joyce (next door neighbour’s)came around yesterday to say goodbye as they’ll be out for the day today. It probably came as no surprise to them that we were still at the front of the house in the last throws of packing when they came back in mid-afternoon. It was at about this point when Roland said he needed to do his tax return on-line before we go – he wasn’t joking. By now it was about three o’clock and I was feeling really very anxious so he decided it would have to wait and we eventually got hitched up and were ready for the off. It was only at the final electrics check, where I stand behind the van and check all the lights are working and that the fridge has connected to the car battery that we realised that the fridge wasn’t working off battery. It worked of the mains fine but not from battery. This had never happened before and was a major problem that could stop us from leaving. My injections have to be kept at between 2 and 8 degrees and as we’d be travelling around for a year, sometimes in high temperatures, it was imperative that the fridge worked off the car battery.
To cut a long story short we eventually decided to just go for it. I wrapped the injections in bubble wrap and clamped ice packs around them and dropped them in a cool bag. By now, it’s around 5pm.
Arrived at the Hawthorn farm campsite at Dover at 9pm. I wasn’t expecting anything very special assuming that most campers, like us, would simply be using it as a one night stop over before or after a ferry crossing. However, the site was a really pleasant surprise. Set high up on the cliffs above Dover, it looked as if there’d be some nice walks from there and clearly people were staying for longer than overnight. The site was very well presented, planted with flower boxes and troughs all along the site roads and the toilet and shower block was new and positively gleaming. Perhaps our luck has changed.