What happened to the forward planning?!

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In my head two days would be more than enough time to get ready, and it would have been, if I had remembered the things I needed. Wednesday morning started off fairly chilled, till I decided to plug my Tom Tom in to the laptop. The updates downloaded in seconds but the transfer was going to take over an hour, so I left it while I carried on packing. By 10am it was still claiming it need an hour, so begrudgingly I decided to do a few last minute jobs, which I was gong to do on route to the ferry, but would now have to go back home instead. The first was to pick up the radio remote which I thought was in my Land Rover. It wasn't, so that was a load of time wasted. I then headed for Tesco to pick up a few essentials and some euros, but the road works halfway there where so messed up, that when the light went green, there was still a queue of traffic coming from the other end! When I eventually got to Tesco, the shopping and euros, were quickly done, so I decided to fill up while I was there. Big mistake! The pumps I had chosen weren't "pay at the pump", so I had to wait for the first two to be served and move so I could fill up, then go and pay myself. I finally left Tesco at quarter to eleven, which was the time I wanted to be on the motorway, as the ferry was at 12, but I still had to get home and pick up the sat nav. This meant going through the poxy road works again, and when I did arrive home, the thing was still installing, so I pulled it and ran. Now I didn't need the sat nav to get to Dover, so I hadn't switched it on, but when I did, I realised that by pulling it too early, it now had no mapping installed. Now to say this was the cherry on the cake of stress is an understatement. So for the whole ferry trip, (which I just made it on to), I was researching how to do it with out a laptop, which I had left behind, as I didn't want to risk leaving it in the van while watching the races. Turns out you can't, so I found a computer shop in Calais to try and resolve it. In the mean time I had ranted on Facebook, and many friends gave me suggestions and offers of posting things to me at a campsite. Grateful as I was, I didn't know what campsite I would be at, and I wouldn't be there long enough to wait for it. There was also suggestions of going old school and using paper maps, now I have found from experience, I'm very good at navigating with them and very good at driving with instruction from someone navigating, but I can not do both, especially for two months.

The shop in Calais did its best to install the maps, but I had unfortunately corrupted the file on the thing, so after walking around Calais for four hours, waiting, it was still dead. The next option of getting someone to catch a ferry over as a foot passenger( well I say someone, it was going to be Dad), failed Because they only take foot passengers twice a day, and a car or bike at this short notice was going to be costly, and time was against me, as I had now already lost a days driving. So the next morning I went back to Calais in time for the French version of Halfords to open, and bought their cheapest gps with Europe mapping, then finally made a start for Germany. It took me a little while to get used to the new one, and I've found it doesn't like built up areas, but otherwise it does the job. Unfortunately I got next to no sleep that night, I think because I didn't eat or drink enough yesterday, and the stress of sorting this mess, meant that even though I now had navigation, I was not going to have a great start. But I managed to cover over half the distance before I got too tired to continue, and found a campsite for the night. It also meant that I didn't have to go through the centre of Brussels at rush hour, as this probably would have made me homicidal. That night I got to break out the fire stove to cook, as another thing I realised I hadn't replaced, was the empty gas bottle, and the current one was replaced in Salisbury, so could die at any moment. Plus it seems that France, Belgium, and Germany are the only countries that do not sell the ones I need. So I will try to eek it out till I reach Spain.

The next day started off well with a bastard hot shower that I couldn't adjust, and again I was finding hard to stomach breakfast. I've now put this down to nerves, as by mid morning I was feeling fine, and as for sleep, I went to bed early, but didn't really get a good nights sleep. With this in mind, i opted for a motorway start, to avoid the city centre, as Brussels has its own M25. This at points, got very busy, but never stopped, and as time was going well, I used motorways till the end.

Just before the end I pulled in to a services for a quick walk around, and a guy starts asking me questions as he was fascinated by the van, and after a good 15 minutes chatting, he walked over to his company car and handed me a bunch of bottled beers. Two malt and two cherry, so Germany is off to a good start with me already. The van got hot but never went above the half mark, which I was happy about, and I arrived in Titz just before midday. This meant I had plenty of time to suss out a nice spot to park, and get a bit of shopping done, though it did then mean I had nothing to do for the afternoon. Well until the film crew turned up. They were from the Belgian version of BBC local (his description) and I was filmed reading a mag, then walking out of the van to talk to the interviewer. This I had to do twice as I made the rookie mistake of looking into the camera. You'd think that I'd have this in the bag after being on European TV before, (well the van has, I haven't). I then had the awkward moment of a sponsor car stopping, probably to give me some free sample of whatever, while I'm about to take a piss! Luckily, even though I had dropped my trousers, I had knocked the toilet roll on the floor, and when they saw me put that back on the shelf, they must have realised and drove off. The lesson here is shut ALL curtains, not just the ones you THINK people might see you from. After dinner I started looking at travel options to get me to Düsseldorf that would keep me dry, as it's forecast to rain heavily all day, but there wasn't one, as all trains are fully booked and buses don't go there direct, so I'll just have to stick to plan A, and ride. It was also at this point I realised I hadn't put the Europe maps on my garmin, which I meant to do after cycling to Roubaix in April. But like everything, I'd forgotten it till I needed it again. So like Roubaix, I'll have to bodge the sat nav to the handle bars to get me there. Luckily it doesn't start till 3pm, so I've got most the day to work it out.

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