Bonjour!

Bonjour tout le monde, j'ai traversé la Manche et le processus a été très simple! Je suis actuellement assis sur un site à Aires qui coûte 10 euros la nuit. Juste me rassembler. Je retrouverai Raychel quand elle aura fini de travailler, mais entre-temps, c'est très calme avec moi et Ollie! J'irai peut-être à Calais dans la matinée, mais pour l'instant je reste sur place. J'écrirai une autre mise à jour dans la matinée.
Je suis allé faire les courses ce matin au supermarché et je suis assis dans un parking gratuit dans un bel endroit appelé Le Touquet. Le soleil brille, j'ai une bouteille de vin à attendre plus tard pendant que je regarde du rugby.
Hi everybody, I made it across the channel, and it was a very easy process! I'm currently sitting in an Aires site which is 10 euro for the night. Just gathering myself. I will be meeting up with Raychel when she's finished doing business, but in the meantime it's very quiet with just me and Ollie! I may venture into Calais in the morning, but for now I'm staying put. I will write another update in the morning.
I went to the supermarket to stock up this morning, and I'm sitting in a free car park in a lovely place called Le Touquet. The sun is shining, I have a bottle of wine to look forward to later while I watch some rugby 😁😁😁😁😁😁

On the way at last!

Due to the uncertainty about leaving the EU, and even though there has been an extension to the process, we don't trust politicians further than we can spit, so we decided that I should take Ollie and head on down to Folkstone and from there to France via the tunnel.
If we crash out of Europe, then his pet passport won't be valid any more and we won't be able to leave for about 4 months.
Raychel is staying in the UK for another week or so. 
A bit of a blow today, my driving license expires in September, and so does my IDP, so I will have to come back to renew them.
Currently sat in a pub I found in Britstops, the Tavern at telscombe cliffs
Nice enough place but a little loud for me. Still, free overnight parking!
I will continue my journey in the morning. It's nice not to have to rush.

After a brief stop in Newhaven, we decided to head for a Caravan and Motorhome club site in West Hythe called Daleacres. I checked out the Chunnel crossings, and decided that for a few extra quid, I would wait until the 11.20 crossing so I could have a lie in, sort out Brian (stuff you don't want to know about!!!). Sitting in Brian with a glass of something strong, and having just eaten egg and onion and garlic chips (prepared by my own fair hand). Tomorrow, I will be heading for Folkstone and the Chunnel. Looking forward to some cheap wine and cheese!

Road Trip

Wednesday 13th March
We've decided to head on down to Cornwall for a bit and then come back via Glastonbury as Raychel wants to visit.
My aim is to get to the St. Ives Bay caravan park as I spent many a happy holiday there in my younger days.
We stopped at a lovely pub for the night, called the Thimble and had a couple of drinks and some lovely food (I had jugged beef, a sweet type of casserole with some horseradish mash. Gorgeous!).
Thursday 14th
The next morning we packed up and moved on. We drove down to Weymouth beach and sat in Brian with a nice mug of hot, fresh coffee and munched some Pringles rice fusions. The weather was windy, dark and prone to frequent heavy showers, but we went for a walk anyway. We couldn't let Ollie down, could we?!!!
We were going to spend the night in the car park of the Stoke Inn in a place near Plymouth, but being the type of person I am, I hadn't read the Britstops entry properly, and the entrance to the car park was worryingly low (10 foot). We decided to move on to a pub called the Who'd Have Thought It, and after missing a turning and being sent down a farm track to get back on the A30 by Gladys (Google maps), we arrived to a wonderful pub.
We forgot to pay for our drinks and had to settle up the next day after lunch!!!
Friday 15th
Onward to St Ives Bay. The caravan park where I used to camp when I was younger wasn't open, but we found a caravan and motorhome site just down the road called the Godrevy and parked up for a couple of days.
The first day, we took Ollie for a walk across the sand dunes and then along the beach. I managed to loose his tennis ball down a rabbit hole so I think he was upset with me!
It was blowing a gale, and poor Ollie is only a short arse, so he got a bit sand blasted, like my legs.
We made our way back to Brian, and decided we would take a walk down to Hayle so I could watch the rugby (I wish I hadn't bothered - the Irish didn't do us any favours, and we gave up a 31 - 0 lead to only manage a 38 - 38 draw! Dreadful).
Anyway, we managed to go the wrong way out of the caravan park, and the pub at the end of it was closed. The rain was absolutely horizontal, poor Ollie was like a drowned rat, and we were about to give up (I discovered my coat is only shower proof, and my boots are only waterproof if you haven't got gallons of water pouring into them).
We decided as a last resort to trudge back up the hill and see if we could hitch a lift. If we didn't succeed by the time we got back to the park, then we were going to retreat to the van and lick our wounds!
But, someone did stop and drove us wet and cold to a pub called the Cornubia where it was warm and dry and they had beers and rugby.
When we were done, we got a cab back.
The next morning, I had a bit of a tidy, and then we set off for Portsmouth, as Raychel had a funeral to go to. The M27 was closed because of an accident, so we stopped at a brilliant biker pub called the Churchill Arms and had a nice meal and then went to bed.
After the funeral, we set off for Glastonbury via Stonehenge and Durrington Walls - totally brilliant! Ollie thought so as well and as is his wont, tore around Woodhenge like a maniac. Apart from when a herd of sheep decided to run directly towards us it's well worth a (short) visit. However, at £36, we decided to make do with a view of Stonehenge from the road as we drove by. Off to Glastonbury! 

I have never been to the Tor before and Raychel hadn't been there for years, so it was a new experience. We walked to the top (not without a little puffing and blowing!). The views were incredible! Ollie was running around like a loon as usual.

After Glastonbury, we headed down the coast to Instow for a couple of cheeky free nights on the sea front. The pubs along there are great. Neither of us have visited Westeward Ho! (the only place in the UK with an exclamation mark). Again the beach was magnificent, we seem to have turned up at all these beaches when the tide was out and the sand was revealed in all it's glory! Once we were done there, we headed for home. I have no idea how many miles we travelled, but it was enough to knacker me enough to sleep really well for a couple of nights!!

A Weekend Away

We have decided to have a break away from Gosport for the weekend, so we packed up Brian and Ollie and headed east. With a little discussion, we decided that as neither of us had been to the Witterings and Bracklesham, that would be our first stop. We went to the beach and tried to knacker Ollie chasing his ball (fat chance, he seemed to have more energy after the walk than before!) up and down the lovely sandy beach. It was blowing a gale and the tide was out revealing the fantastic sandy beach. Ollie kept us laughing with his antics, and pathetic attempts to jump up the groynes when he chased his ball! We had a couple of cuppa's back at the van and then wandered to the cafe to grab a coffee and some food (reasonable price and quality), and then Raychel had a little snooze until we had to leave before they closed the car park gates (6pm). We planned to go to a pub, have a couple of drinks and possibly some food, and then cheekily ask the bar staff if we could stay in their car park overnight. The first pub we went too said no, so we went to The Shore Inn , which is a brilliant pub with a great atmosphere, and it was busy. When Raychel joined me and Ollie in the pub, and after we had had a couple of drinks, and Ollie had decided that he wanted to snuggle up with someone else, much their delight, I went and asked if we could stay in their car park overnight. The answer was yes, but with the proviso that we left earlyish in the morning as the landlord chained the gates on weekend mornings to stop people parking there to go to the beach. Brilliant!! We had a few more drinks, then as they didn't do food in the evenings, we wandered out into the wet and windy night to find an Indian take away that was still open. We ate that back at Brian and then settled down to sleep. It was wonderful to lay there in the dark with the wind moving the van about and the sound of the wind chucking rain at us. The alarm went off at 8am (uuuuuggggghhhh!). We went to a service station and topped up with petrol, then headed down to Bracklesham, where I'm sitting in Brian typing this while we look out over the mucky looking sea with idiots kite surfing and people walking their dogs. Ollie emerged for a wee, and has since been asleep. I think he's happy. When we first arrived, there were a couple of strange people who ran down to the water to go swimming. That didn't last long.

Update

As it is at the moment, we are still here for a bit. We have a problem with one of our houses that means we need to stay in the country until at least the 29th of March. What it does mean, however, is that we can do some travelling around this fair land for a bit, so we are going to head West and see where we end up. There is a vague plan to visit Glastonbury, and Tim would love to visit St Ives Bay again.
Stay tuned for more updates, but we're hoping to be off this weekend or Monday (2nd, 3rd, 4th March).