A long ride back to London

Because we’re unemployed cheapskates with plenty of time to kill we broke our own promise never to catch a long distance bus ever again. While Sam and Shaun were happily flying across the channel, we got up early and embarked upon an epic 11 hour Amsterdam to Brussels to Calais to London bus ride.

We couldn’t have planned it any better. We got to the bus early to secure good seats, had plenty of snacks, and planned two movies to fit perfectly within the laptop’s battery life.

Having started the journey at 10:30am, the first seven hours flew by. It was at this point that we started to think that perhaps long distance bus rides weren’t so bad.

Perhaps that was our mistake. 

It was at this point that the bus stopped.

We approached Calais to go through customs and cross the channel and that was where we sat, motionless in the most extreme traffic jam you can possibly imagine. It turns out that every Englishman and his dog who had been holidaying in Europe over New Years simultaneously decided to head back home through the Calais tunnel, creating the most horrendous bottle neck.

Without a word of exaggeration we drove 3kms in 3.5 hours.

That was where everything went down hill. We’d eaten all our snacks, the laptop battery ran out, and worst of all, the toilet on the bus was completely blocked.

By the time we arrived back in London, caught the last Tube home and got into bed it was 2am.

Never again will we catch a long distance bus ride. 

The long drive back to Lille

*Sorry it's been a while since we've posted...we've been a bit out of routine :)
These posts date back to mid December...but we'll quickly be back up to date.


As all good things must come to an end we started the long drive from Venice back to Lille to hand the van back. Due to not doing enough research about Schengen visas we had to cut the campervanning part of our adventure a few days short to avoid issues heading to Holland for Christmas and New Years (it’s a long story…we won’t bore you with it here!).

From Venice, we had the choice of driving to the east of Switzerland and up through Germany, or west of Switzerland and through France. The Germany option had the upside of no tolls on the autobahn, but the risk of snow and getting caught without winter tires (a requirement by law). We decided to take the safer, but more expensive option of going through France.

Our last night in the van was spent in a French town called Samoëns on the edge of the Alps...in the snow. We woke up in the morning and made the most of being back in France by heading straight to a patisserie. It was a nice way to finish up – although cold!

Breakfast in France, lunch in Germany, dinner in Switzerland

We finished up our time in France (for now) and headed to Switzerland. We were planning our route to Berne and realized that The Black Forest was essentially on our way, so we decided to take a slight detour through Germany.

It was a good decision. Aside from getting to drive through the gorgeous Black Forest and eat some fantastic Germany sausage and fried potatoes for lunch, we also bought a Cuckoo Clock! It was a very exciting purchase and we’re looking forward to finding a home for it among our increasingly eclectic collection of modern art, crocheted rugs and vintage furniture.

INSERT BLOG NAME HERE

(More photos to come)

We arrived in Lille full of excitement and anticipation as we picked up our home for the next three months – the campervan! Before long, we had filled in the requisite paperwork and we were on our way. At this point, we thought our next blog post title would be ‘Our new home’.

Our excitement, however, quickly dissolved and turned into fear and confusion…WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE DOING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD?!?!

Learning to drive on the right hand side of the road is one of the more difficult things we have ever done. Everything feels upside-down and back-to-front. We almost had a head on collision, side swiped an unsuspecting cyclist and ran into some parked cars….and that was all before we’d left the campervan depot!

It was at this point that we thought a more apt blog post title would be ‘Dazed and confused’

Not to be deterred, we soldiered on to our first destination – Gent in Belgium. Monique was very supportive while Daniel was driving, serenading him with Beyonce’s hit To the Left whenever we started drifting off the road. Less helpful was when she exclaimed: ‘I don’t want to distract you, but there’s a giant naked man on the side of the road’. While Queensland has The Big Pineapple, it turns out that Belgium has ‘The Big, Middle Aged, Balding, Overweight Naked Guy’.

We arrived at the campsite after making a (not so) quick detour via Ikea and the supermarket for supplies and started preparing dinner. It had been a beautifully warm and sunny day, but the moment the sun started going down it got very cold, very damp, very quickly.

Due to the oh-so-quaint size of the van, all the cooking, food preparation, bed making and general tidying needs to be done while standing outside. We quickly cast our minds forward a couple of months…to Germany in the middle of December.

Upon this realization, we felt that the most appropriate name for this blog post was ‘Whose idea was this anyway?’

You can choose.  

We're on our way!

Hi everyone! Welcome to our blog.

We have started our big adventure with great excitement and much trepidation. It was very hard leaving family and friends, but we know the next 12 months is going to be an amazing time.

After much planning and preparation, we left Yarra Glen at 11am on Sunday 21^st August and finally arrived in Dublin 37 hours later. Needless to say….we were both pretty tired and in desperate need of soap, shampoo and warm running water…shower-in-a-can just wasn’t cutting it. A few key points from our journey…

•      Daniel made the most of the rare opportunity to watch action movies
•      Being lucky enough to score a window seat doesn’t necessarily equal a window
•      There is a rainforest in the middle of Kuala Lumpur departures terminal
•      Monique got patted down by a creepy Heathrow customs officer
•      Sitting on a plane for 22 hours is an effective hair straightening tool

First stop, Skerries - a fishing village just north of Dublin...