Three Ferries to Greece or Two Innocents Abroad In A Honda Accord

This is the account of our leaving England and driving to Greece between the 9th and 19th November 2006.  We kept a notebook in the car with us and recorded our thoughts about the journey across the English Channel, through France and Italy, across the Adriatic Sea to Greece and the final leg of our journey to Alonissos.  Every detail that we recorded is set out in this account of our journey along with the photographs we took along the way.  We left our home in Broom, Bedfordshire on Wednesday 8th November 2006.  We were full of anticipation as we were starting the journey to our new life on Alonissos.  We stayed at Brenda and Martin's house in Langford, Bedfordshire overnight on the 8th November after all our worldly goods had been taken by Dolphin Movers during the day.  Our lovely Plum Tree Cottage in Broom, Bedforsdhire was devoid of everything except 20 years of wonderful memories.

Thursday 9th November 2006

Brenda and Martin's house mid morning after tearful goodbyes to our dearest friends and headed off to the A1 towards the M25.  we got as far as Stevenage when Gerry realised she's left all her smokey stuff - tobacco, papers, filters and lighter at Brenda and Martin's  Good start to our journey.

Major, major problems on the M25 heading towards the QE2 bridge so we tried to avoid the queues on the M25 at the South Mimms junction by going along the back roads south of Potters Bar and then through Enfield and on to the A10 to the junction with the M25.  When we got there we found there was no right turn onto the clockwise M25 and we had to drive back to Potters Bar and on to the M25 and sit in the queue on the slip road.  The problem was tunnel works at the A10 junction so after sitting in the slow moving traffic we eventually got on to open road and the journey to Nik and Lyn's was thereafter quite uneventful.

We arrived at Nik and Lyn's late afternoon and were made very welcome.  We recounted our story over a few glasses of wine then needed to use their Internet to check for tickets on the train through the Channel Tunnel.  We were told that the tickets in the morning were cheap by a friend in Broom but when we logged on they were £161 instead of £45.  After some research we found the cheapest way across to Calais was by SeaFrance so we booked our ticket online for £50 for us and the car and settled down for a nice evening meal and a few more glasses of wine.