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“He’ll be fine. Just a few hours and we’re home. As if anything is going to go wrong”

Rouen – Calais – Bourne End

As they say, all good things must come to an end.

It was nice to wake up in a hotel room, and not in the fetal position in a collapsed tent. This was our final day, and there wasn’t really anything to it, but to drive the couple of hundred kms to Calais to get the chunnel home.

We got down to the car park. Milo was still there and started fine. Great stuff. We should hopefully have no problems now. A few hours driving and it’s the train home.

However.

 

Oh, however.

He was feeling a little sluggish getting out of the car park, and I just assumed my impatience in not letting him warm up properly was what was causing it. But, once 10m out on the road, the driver of the car next to us points to the underside of the car. I put my thumb up, pull over, and assume he’s pointing to the exhaust being pretty close to the ground. Unfortunately not. A completely flat rear tyre (not even the tyre that was low on thread that I was expecting to blow at any time). So, I use our tyre filler, and we start sat naving to find a local garage. We drive very slowly, and arrive, and after a 5 minute pidgin French conversation he says come back in an hour. 25 minutes later after worrying too much, he says there are no tyres of our size. Great.

He recommends a tyre garage not too far away that might have some, so we head off (he also refused to swap the 2 front tyres over, to try and save the wear – after a few whistles along the lines of “how on earth is this tyre still going. It is thread bare”). Thankfully the 2nd garage says they have a couple. I try to inform them that we have a train to catch, but there was lots of shoulder shrugging to highlight the fact, he didn’t really care. Bof.

But, we’re on the road, and clearly not going to make our allotted time slot. We get there an hour or so late, but it doesn’t seem to matter and we just have to hang around a little longer and spend more money in the Channel Tunnel shop. There was a little bit of a worrying moment with customs, as it seems Meg panics in the face of just being honest and telling the truth to government officials. Too much time in China. Definitely too much time in China…

It was great to be on the train, and to have that sense of everything being ok, and nearly home. And thankfully no more dramas (i.e. Milo started when we arrived in the UK!).

Why do trips have to end? I really wish they wouldn’t…

Day 42

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