Difficult day

Ned was poorly just before Easter. It appears he bought a vomiting bug with him from North Devon. 

Sunday was a day spent mostly at home with a poorly boy, and when we eventually attempted a walk up the coast path, it became apparent that Ned's tummy wasn't as settled as we hoped, so we cut our losses, came home and crossed our fingers that all would be well for Monday's visit to register at the tax office, but more importantly Tuesday's Even More Epic Drive to Norway for Easter. 

I think we were feeling fairly confident that Ned would be okay, until 5am on Monday morning when he came into our room looking for some water.  Quick bedding and pj change, which Maisie slept through, and he was back asleep.  

We decided the best course of action was to let Ned sleep whilst we pottered about, and about 2pm, leaving lots of time before meeting our relocation lady who would be assisting us at the tax office, Ned threw up again, this time all over himself, Jim, the wooden floor, door and glass tv stand.

A frantic 30 minutes of tidying, cleaning, washing on and clothing changes and we were off. I think it's fair to say that Jim and I were a little bit fraught by this point; we needed to go to the tax office, our previous visit had been called off due to incompetence (not ours you'll be pleased to know), and in order to be able to get a bank account we have to be registered, so for every day we're delayed it means we have to keep using our UK bank accounts. Ned was clearly poorly and should we even be taking him?  I will point out that we had quite a lot of stuff with us just in case he was ill again.

So this is the part where it all went a little bit wrong 😖

We found a car park, I got a ticket. I put the ticket in the van, only the passenger door was also open thus causing a through draft which sucked the parking ticket down between the dashboard and the windscreen, trapping it with no way of reaching said ticket (well only if you remove the windscreen and that seemed a little extreme!). So with various angry shouty words from Jim ringing in my ears, I went back to get another ticket, handed it to Jim.  

And the van locked itself.

With the keys inside.

And my keys were at home. 

Not in my bag. 

But at home, in the locked house to which we had no way of gaining entry.

I can laugh now, and indeed there is a little smile playing on my lips as I write this, but you can imagine there wasn't much laughter going on at the time. 

The kids and I left Jim shouting at the van and trying desperately to see if the window would unwind, whilst thinking it was probably a good job I'd 2 hours of parking rather than 1, but it seemed prudent to keep that comment to myself 😉

We headed off to the tax office in stony silence, each of us, I think, trying to be grown up and not get all shouty. 

The only logical solution was to call the breakdown people and see if they could come and sort us, but before we could do this, the lady from the relocation agency arrived, and after a flurry of 'hello, how nice to meet you's', Jim explained that we weren't really having the best of days, but at least we were here.

Once we'd explained what was going in, her response was perfect.  We had an actual responsible grown up adult with us, who said, oh I'll just call your landlady she'll have left a spare key with someone. 

Now why the hell hadn't we thought of that? 🤔

Whilst we completed various bits of paperwork, she called the owner, found out who had the spare key, yes they were home and expecting us, she would take Maisie and I home to collect the keys, then bring us back to rejoin Ned and Jim with the van.  

It's clearly quite simple, but we just couldn't see it at the time

So once our applications were in, she did indeed drive Maisie and I home to collect the keys and drive us back again.

My keys now live in my bag. Like they're supposed too.

Here we go!

I am writing this post from our new sitting room in Sweden! We did it!

Don't mention the swedish chef ;) ps he's our new van mascot

So after a couple of hectic days cleaning the house around the removal guys, Friday dawned reasonably sunny.  Jim headed off to work, and the kids were taken out for a walk by Grampa so I could finish packing and repacking our bags that were to accompany us on, what has become known as, our Epic Drive Across Europe.

After a few chores, including collecting the dogs from our very lovely friends and leaving them my car, we started the drive in earnest.

Last few times we've driven to Gatwick, the channel tunnel is in the same direction, we've had nightmare journeys, so given that Friday was the last day of term for most schools we were expecting the worst. Imagine our surprise when we made it to our hotel in Ashford without mishap or mayhem! Frankly most of that is due to the purchase of an in car DVD Player for the kids, and their love of Star Wars!

Darth Vader, the dark lord and saviour of long car journeys

After an incredibly grumpy start (me and the stupid woman at the hotel), we rocked up to the euro tunnel terminal in a state of extreme excitement - well the kids did, I think Jim and I were too knackered, and or grumpy in my case!

Still bacon baps and a cuppa tea soon worked their magic, and we boarded our train in high spirits.

Ned couldn't quite understand how we managed to end up in France when we got off the train, but was soon ensconced in Star Wars and only really paying attention to Europe when we passed into the Nederlands - which apparently is Ned's own country (according to him)!

Ned's homeland

The drive to Germany seemed to pass in a blur, but Germany was the biggest single country stretch we had to make. It was slightly fraught around the autobahns of Duisberg and Essen, where it seems there are soooooooooo many roads in every single direction, but we made it without a) getting lost; b) going wrong and c) not shouting at each other or the kids.

Tiredness eventually took over Jim, so I took over the driving.  Now our van is a VW T5 long wheel base. I'm used to driving a very compact Audi A2. So after a few nervous minutes whilst I adjusted to the van we were off. Jim and the kids all fast asleep, leaving me to exclaim to the dogs 'Ooh look there are some deers!', but of course with them being in back, they couldn't see them, even if they knew what I was talking about.

Driving on the autobahns, is, as one friend commented, like being in an episode of Top Gear. The Germans really do drive fast! At one point I was doing 140kph - I'm metric now (@90 mph), and was overtaken as if I was standing still!  Mind you the roads are amazing to drive along; wide, smooth and empty, so it was quite fun.

A quick pit stop to cook pasta and pesto for tea and walk the dogs, and we started our last stretch from close to Hamburg to Travemünde where we would catch the ferry.

We arrived in Travemünde without mishap and found the ferry port.  I must warn you, that should you decide to follow in our Epic Drive, the ferry port is not like Brittany Ferries! It's a proper truckers port.  Hundreds of lorries waiting to board ferries to Malmo, Helsinki or even St Petersburg.  The possibility of ending up on the wrong ferry was actually quite high (actually it wasn't but I'll explain more later).

We were booked onto the ferry at 1am, with boarding due to start around midnight, so when we rocked up at 8.15pm, we thought we'd ask if we could catch the earlier ferry which left at 10pm. A very short chat with the man in the ticket office proved fruitless, so we settled down for a bit of wait.  

As the loading for the Helsinki ferry began (the cars were queued next to us) our attention was drawn to a little white van with flashing yellow lights.  It became apparent that, when it was your turn, you would follow said little white van to the correct ferry, thereby ruling out the possibility of ending up on the wrong boat.  If, however, you were in a lorry, it seemed that you were allowed to follow the correct signs and board without following the man in the little white van with the flashing lights!  Although it didn't stop several lorry drivers having to reverse as they'd gone wrong, but that may have had something to do with all the duty free beer that was being drunk (which might not have been the truckers!). The ferry terminal building was basically a beer supermarket with slightly overweight rusky truckers carrying trays and trays of beer to their lorries!

Midnight came and went, the kids were beside themselves, they'd been so good, but the last 30 minutes was just a bit too much for them. So when the little white van pulled up in front of us and then took the other queue out first, Maisie actually cried at this point. 

There were only 12 passenger vehicles on our whole
 ferry, all the rest were lorries

Anyway we joined the queue of about 12 passenger vehicles and followed the van. Now our next conundrum was that we needed the loader to leave space behind the van so we could open the boot and let our the dogs, so, in a very daring and brave moment, I hopped out the van, Whilst It Was Still Moving! So it was about 2 mph, but still! Jim had already told the chap we had to open the boot, but I did open it so he could see how much room we needed.

Our cabin

The ferry ticket was rather cheap compared to Brittany Ferries, and as we were travelling with the dogs, we'd booked a pet cabin - a cabin where you can take your pets (a maximum of 2, consisting of either dogs, cats or ferrets which for the life of me I can't quite understand why you would take your ferret on holiday!?) - so we were expecting something similar to the crappy Travelodge hotel we'd had at Ashford, but it was more like a cruise state room! Even the shower was better!

Apart from the dogs tap dancing in the night - their claws on the hard plastic bottom of their crate, we all got some much deserved sleep, and woke up about an hour before we passed under the Bridge!

I think it was at that moment it all became properly real, and just a bit more scary!