The plan for early morning on Friday 5th July was to get up and drive down to Dover. So that's exactly what we did; a 4am start and a 0445 leaving from home to catch an 0800 ferry to Dunkirk. Poppy and I had never been abroad together so it was pretty exciting! I drove down to Dover, roof down of course, struggling to keep my eyes open after such an early start. Driving onto the ferry was absolutely terrifying as, while my spatial awareness is pretty good, there's still an awful lot that could go wrong, but we parked just behind another '5, albeit a Mk3, and had a chat with the owners which was nice. Then up into the ferry for a cooked breakfast and a cup of tea. Yum!
Tom made me drive off the ferry into Dunkirk; we were off to a supermarket to pick up some provisions for the day's lunch as well as a couple of Artichokes for my mum (they're cheaper in France!). Having never driven on the continent before, I was utterly terrified and had a few 'where am I going?!' moments when lanes seemed to just disappear without warning. Good thing the boyfriend was there as a calming influence! He drove onwards from the supermarket, having deployed a Munzee there, with the intention of visiting Rotterdam. As it happened, traffic was against us, even relatively early on a Friday afternoon, and we spent most of the afternoon in traffic. Some driver swapping was necessary, both because we were getting bored and because Vodafone had buggered up both our phones, so calls needed to be made. That said, we saw some totally random parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, tiny little backroads that we'd never have otherwise come across so it wasn't all bad! The only issue we had was that, with it being hot and the engine essentially idling for so long, we noticed that the engine temperature gauge was reading higher than usual. No overheated engine for my car, thanks! Blowers went on 'hot', pointed at the sky, and we sat like that for about half an hour. Thank goodness we could have the roof off to prevent us heating up too; that's apparently an old Mini owners' trick - can't imagine it's so pleasant then! So, we ended up reaching the hotel in Haarlem about 1900 and checked in. Er, well, tried to; laterooms had made another mistake and not actually bothered to book our room with the hotel. The manager, a lovely woman, rang laterooms up to ask after we'd shown her our booking reference and suchlike and they said they'd sent the email previously. A likely story as two minutes after the phone call, it arrived in her inbox! Hmm, that's the second cock up they've made out of, er, two. There was some saving grace in that the hotel itself was lovely so we got undressed, showered, drank a couple of glasses of 8.5% alc. beer that we'd picked up in Carrefour (cue spinning heads!) and walked down to the hotel restaurant for a super tasty dinner before a walk into Haarlem itself for a beer.
Saturday was spent in Amsterdam; the car didn't move once! As this is primarily a car blog, I'll gloss over most of that day but suffice to say I rather like Amsterdam - there's something about the pace of life there that was really...nice. We found a lovely little bar, technically a Gay Bar but I don't suppose it matters at lunchtime, and sat outside in the sun on upturned flower pots in a quiet, residential area, with a few beers. Bliss!
On the Sunday, after quite a few beers the previous day, we woke at a decent time and, rejecting the possibility of a sauna at the hotel due to its requirement for nudism, grabbed a coffee (Tom's social engineering understanding helped here. Ahem) and got in the car to drive to Arnhem. Tom thought I'd like to see Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery as I've always been interested in World War history. The drive down was pretty miserable; not roof down weather by any means as it was absolutely pissing down. Side lights had to go on to see but not my main lights as I was too precious about my car to stick beam benders on the actual headlights! It was nice that, after only having done it once before, on Friday, I settled into driving on the right quickly, despite the rain. It was somewhat less nice that my car did leak a bit; it got taped up on the passenger side with parcel tape (don't ask why we brought parcel tape...) but I just got wet! There may be some seals that need replacing then...
We drove down to Arnhem, just over an hour from Haarlem, with the Wonderstuff playing in the background, and attempted to follow the signs for the Cemetery. As it happens, we may have got a little lost but only temporarily! Within a few minutes, we were parked up and, matching 'Club Mango' Paramo jackets donned, we got out the car. We read through the list of names and signed the visitors' book and wandered round, taking in the loss around us. One of the saddest things was the few men who'd been seconded from their original unit to another, sometimes a unit of a completely different country - they died with relative strangers around them trying to defend and fight for a foreign country. I guess the Cemetery, being WW2, hit me more than the WW1 ones have ever done in a personal sense - any one of these men could have been my Grandfather and I will admit that I had tears in my eyes walking around. The three decades between the world wars made all the difference for how recent WW2 still feels.
Fifteen minutes or so after we arrived, a man walked up to Tom and started talking to him. I was on the other side of the cemetery so missed their introduction but, when I walked over, he was telling Tom about his experiences and of how his father had buried a pair of young British soldiers and of his own search for their descendants. He took us over to see their graves and introduced himself as Rudy; an engaging Dutch man with some fascinating stories to tell. You can find out a little more about his story *here* . He took us to the Airborne Museum at Arnhem and managed to talk his way into us getting in for free; for showing us the Museum and telling us his stories, Rudy really did prove a highlight of our weekend and I couldn't thank him enough!
We finished our walk around the Museum and drove toward Dunkirk. Tom took the driving this time and we had the lid down the whole way. This did, admittedly, mean that we got soaked at one point! An awful lot of people driving past looked at us like we were completely nuts but an English couple did beep and grin; it clearly amused them that their fellow countrymen were quite so hardy. Or something. Probably more of the 'or something' ...! We had to make an 'emergency' fuel stop as the fuel line was right down but, seeing the prices in the Netherlands, we pressed on to Belgium. Good thing too as the fuel was over 20 cents a litre cheaper than where we'd previously seen it. That and we got 299 miles out of my tank; best ever that we've had. Admittedly, we did have to fill the 35-litre tank up with 37 litres but there we go!
A couple of hours of interview practice on the ferry home (thank you lovely!) and I took over the 3 hour drive from Dover to home. We put the lid down, as it wasn't raining, and, excepting a quick stop for Tom to grab a jumper, it was a clear, quick run home. Of course, the man who doesn't fall asleep in cars fell asleep so I took the opportunity to grab a few photos! He'd been drinking beer with a straw on the first bit of the journey after Dover, including driving through the customs checkpoint, so he maintained it was that and not him that fell asleep! We got home just before midnight and collapsed into bed, curled up together, to a good night's sleep.
What a great weekend. We'll be going back to Amsterdam some time, I hope, or at least another trip to the Continent some time soon. We need to capture the elusive Munzee just offshore from Dover aside from anything else! Thank you to Tom for being wonderful and sharing the driving with me all weekend. <3 you x
[photos to follow]
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