The alarm woke the whole house at 5.30am. And I couldn’t find my phone to turn the screeching thing off! Sorry Nick and Ems. But we were up and away early to catch the morning ferry to France.

We’re sailing from Poole to Cherbourg. There was hardly anyone in the queue when we arrived, and hardly anyone on board. There were quite a few motorbikes and cycle tourists though (seems we have started a trend!).

It was a beautiful calm crossing, but in our madness of packing up, we forgot to make sandwiches. And we were both so hungry. So we succumbed to the overpriced meals on board.

I just wanted a sandwich but this wasn’t an option, only a meal. And I think we have made this mistake before. The meals were absolutely disgusting.

Mike ordered the beef bourginon for us to share, but it tasted suspiciously like kidney and I couldn’t eat it. So I ordered a burger instead but it was so disgusting I couldn’t eat it either. Only the French could fuck up a burger! So I ate the chips, which were surprisingly ok! We must start eating healthier.

5 hours later we arrived in Cherbourg, and set off down the coast. We stopped at the campground we stayed at last time, as we needed to fill up our water and wash our sheets, but it was a sad old place with rusted caravans and looked more like a scrapyard.

So we ditched that idea and headed further down the coast and found a nice freedom camp overlooking the ocean. We took a short stroll along the beach and watched most of the sun set. Then scurried back to the van before we got too cold. We settled down for a game of Uno (Mike won) then Monopoly Deal (He also won) before deciding I had taken enough abuse and it was time for bed.

We rolled out our sheets, preparing for the worst, having sat around all winter in the van, but they were ok. Just a little bit smelly, but tolerable. We were so tired we didn’t care! We’ll find a laundromat tomorrow!

It’s been a mad week since we got here. Jet lag seems to hit harder every year, and we were so tired for the first few days. Our first task was dropping Bertie in to get his awning fitted and also a bike rack. But when we got there, they said couldn’t fit the bike rack because of the modifications Mike had put in last year (dents). But they did fit the awning, but it’s been too windy to test it out yet.

So Mike decided he would fit the bike rack himself. First we took it to a panelbeater, and they told him how to get the dents out himself. So Mike gave it a go. But he banged on the wrong place and ended up putting more dents in. The problem with the dents was they left a big gap between where the rack would fit, but we figured we could just add more sealant to fill the gap. Brother Paul confirmed this should be ok (although it was hard for him to see properly)

So Mike set about putting up the first brackets for the bike rack, which would take 24 hours to dry. So we left them alone and went to the festival. We had an amazing time and there is a whole video on this, so I won’t say too much here.

So on top of jetlag, we also had 3 days of next to no sleep, and 1 whole day free before our ferry to France. In this time, we had to finish the bike rack, get all our clothes washed and dried, go to storage and pack up our van, and get the festival video edited and uploaded. Usually it takes me about a week to do a video, this one took about 6 hours!

Somehow, amazingly, we got almost everything done. Our sheets from last year haven’t been washed, but they will just have to wait until we find a laundromat.

Next stop. France.

The first leg of our flight was so good, apart from the giant baby in our cabin. I don’t know why it was so large, but it was very grizzly. But I still managed to get a good 5 hours sleep.

We had a shorter flight time to Singapore, although we had a short delay as they had to take 3 peoples bags off. I always wonder about the story of people who check their bags, then don’t get on the plane. Why?

We took off about 12.30am, and by the time they had fed us it was about 2.30am. I’m not sure it was actually worth waiting up for.

We were warned of turbulence across Australia, but I hardly noticed it if there was.

We arrived in Singapore and this airport is just so damn easy. We don’t even need to clear security. Then straight through and onto the next flight! Oh and I have to mention the automated wheel chair, just aimlessly wandering around the airport. It looked really lost, so I tried to sit in it. But it growled and said it was out of service. Then if followed me and made me a little nervous. So we took the escalator and we managed to lose it.

We’re just sitting in the lounge, with only a 2 hour wait for our next flight to London. This one is a long one, 14 hours! Oh well.

It’s that time of year again and we are sitting around at home, chewing on our nails, waiting until it’s time to go to the bus station. But as per normal, we’ve left everything to the last minute and we have to wait for the dryer to complete before we can put Poppy in the garage. Why do we have to wait for the dryer? Because when Poppy is in the garage, there is literally an inch to spare.

Eventually the dryer finished and Mike inched Poppy in and disconnected the battery. Our flatmate had kindly offered to drive us to the bus station.

While we were waiting to board the bus, we got talking to a woman who was going back to Dubai. She got evacuated during the bombing, and she said it was way scarier than the media let on. She really didn’t want to go back, but the fees for getting out of her contract were horrendous. I really felt for her.

Our bus was a double decker one and the seats were in a weird front/back layout. And the only seats available were sitting backwards, which was odd, but strangely kind of cool. I got to see all the people overtaking us, and well, it was as interesting as a bus journey could be.

We had to change buses at Manukau, but it was pretty low stress. We are now at the airport about 6 hours before our flight. I swear, we get worse every year! Now we just have to try and stay awake until midnight.