Day 2 – Friday 3rd May 2013
Set off from Geoff & Carole’s at 8.30am, heading for Dover. Today’s slight technical hitch is that the microphone Ian got new for Geoff & Carole’s radio doesn’t appear to be working, they can hear us but can’t transmit, so it’s a bit one-way communication and we’re having to rely on signals from them – one flash of the brake lights for ‘no’, two for ‘yes’ – a bit basic but it’ll have to do for now. Gave Bill Bell a wave as we drove by his place of work before jumping on the M53. Had a very clear run down to Dover in gloriously sunny weather, a couple of stops for fuel re-fills, one unsuspecting admirer of the cars at Corley Services, East Birmingham, was chatting to Geoff and promptly donated £20.00 to the cause, bless! Geoff has now been appointed as chief fund raiser so look out any passing strangers – Geoff is on the prowl! Various texts from Bill Bell whlst we were en route commenting on our whereabouts from watching the tracker, apparently it’s quite mesmerising! A slight de-tour off the route at Canterbury where we popped to a Maplins to get a replacement microphone for the radio, still doesn’t work but Ian is confident it’s just not correctly wired for this particular radio, and Technical Department (aka Ian!) can hopefully work his magic and fix it with a bit of tweaking! Got to Dover ferry terminal in plenty of time for our 4.15pm sailing to Calais. Arrived 1.5hours later, although we’ve obviously gone forward 2.5hours with the time difference, our hotel, Ibis Calais, was just a drive away of approximately 10 miles from the ferry, so got there quite quickly and went to a nearby restaurant for a bite to eat before retiring for some welcome sleep! See you tomorrow, Au Revoir, Bonne Nuit!
