Travelodge Reading M4 Eastbound

Called the garage first thing. Told van should be ready early afternoon. So its off to Annie's for a good English breakfast. Thanks Mum & Dad - much apprecaited.

If the vans ready on time our target is to make Dover and camp overnight. At the moment there is a ...

Well!

Day 1 - Up early - Start van just to make sure it fired! - Finished packing and loading 10:30 we're off!! Returned car to work, handed keys over. Ring ring.. come back..Oh no! disaster, bring jump leads.!! Call the AA the alternator is knackered - off to ...

... park straight out of a scooby-doo cartoon, that said one of the buildings had a traffic cone on it an we thought that it stood out as a great piece of modern art...perhaps Turner prize material.
Once we where in the ground we made our way to the bar, upon buying our beer and finding a place to stand on the right side of the "no alcohol" sign, we where told to kindly step to the side by the steward as you ...

... 4 had suddenly gone quiet to be replaced with an autonomous voice that sounded like the voice of Hal from 2001:

“Pardon” The sat-nav exclaimed nonchalantly.

“Christ!! 221; screamed Shaun again..

“Pardon” the sat-nav replied; “voice command not recognised”, and we burst into a fit of laughter.

I’m guessing people in South America don’t have these problems.

... Mumbai to Trivandrum in India on 3 years ago. It’s been pouring down with rain up until this point and suddenly the sun bursts out from behind the turgid grey wall of English gloom. I begin to wonder what mad journeys we’ll be having in Bolivia and Peru, and the people we’ll meet on our way through South and Central America.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Well here we are, tomorrow night we will be getting on a plane to Bangkok and although we have been waiting for this for so long the last few weeks have really flown by and we can't quite believe we will actually be leaving the UK tomorrow. I have no idea how often this blog is going to get ...

... in the group even though I hadn't been there long at the time.. A couple of the guys didn't come coz they had "better" things to do like spend the evening with their other halves! But it was all good, the rest of us had fun without them. We didn't spend all the money either so we had some left for the next staff party! Which was great fun too an a little sad but that'll pop up in another blog thing later.. the only problem with tryin to write everything out 6-8 months after the fact!

... can drink in the hotel pub until midnight. If you want to keep drinking after that, then you'll have to talk to the manager. That's about it really. Enjoy your stay. England drew by the way, in case you didn't know... ...you spend 93 minutes driving a distance that in a country like Norway would take about 25 minutes. ...you realize how much Spanish TV actually sucks. BBC rocks most of the ...

... best man, and kindly paid for my flight back from NZ. Our room at The Swan was lovely (certainly one of the best we had stayed in for a long time!) and we took full advantage of the tv and stereo (being deprived of both for some time) as we settled in. I joined Rich and Jo for a meeting with the hotel manager and was also told of my best man duties over a couple of pints. As the day wore on, more guests arrived and the afternoon gradually merged into ...