Tuesday 18 February 2014

En France!

It's been too long since I posted... And since I saw my blogging friends over the weekend I feel inspired.

So, we decided to take a fairly last minute trip to see our friends who are church planting in Lille, France. We were booked to get the 10am ferry on Saturday from Dover to Dunkirk. We packed up our car and set off from Winchester at 7am on Saturday morning- aware of the extreme weather conditions of late, and expecting a VERY rough crossing.



The ferry provider website said that there were delays but to still arrive on time for your expected check in and departure. We had a great journey almost all the way to Dover, checking the website for updates all the way. At 8am it changed from 'delays' to 'severe delays'- eesh! 



At 9.10am we had got just past Folkestone and hit a queue. Little did we know it would be a further 8 hours before we actually reached the port. 

(I must add that part way through our journey we realised we had not actually got our sat nav for unsung our way to our friends' house in Lille!)

Having a baby in the car made this even more eventful for us! 

As we were at a standstill for about an hour at a time, then move a bit, we would turn off the engine and try to entertain/feed/change the baby. As well as try and get him to go to sleep for his usual naps! 

Changing a stinking, explosive nappy on your lap is always a challenge!!! 




I'm so glad I had packed up lunch for us!

In one of our long standstills my hubby went and found a loo and managed to get us some much needed cans of coke!
And of course while he was doing this and I had the baby on my lap in the front, my boots off, the traffic started moving... Aahhhh! Classic.


We eventually checked in at the port at 5pm, to get a 7pm ferry. Finally I was able to get my pined after morning coffee which I had planned to have when we got on the ferry at 10am. 

We used this time to buy a map and use the free wifi to figure out how make our way to our friends' house. Taking screen shots of the map around their area- knowing we wouldn't have 3G in France! 

What a day! We eventually made it to Lille at 12am after getting only slightly lost!

We have then enjoyed a lovely couple of days with our friends and our goddaughter- who is so much fun! 

We visited their local park (where the pond was overflowing!), we enjoyed some lovely French dinners, a yummy croc Monsieur out in Lille, saw the very odd looking cathedral (from the outside), had a hot date at the French supermarket stocking up on goodies (where I spoke some French and ended up professing to be an English man!), experienced the local boulangerie and had lots of laughs playing 'ticket to ride- Europe'. Such a great few days- wish it was longer!



Our journey home was MUCH more successful and smooth! The part of our journey that had taken 8 hours in 'operation stack' took only 8 minutes coming back. Hooray! We even had a treat pop in to see our friend in Hythe!

Praise God for safety travelling and lots of fun and special memories as a family!