Home sweet home?

Many of you will have noticed that we're back. I feel I need to finish the story and so here it is...

It's 5:00am. We wake to darkness, the sound of Anf's alarm beep beep beeping, the sound of engines running, and vehicles all around us. Ah. We were a tad late rising, huh?

The other people wanting to board the boat had gone around us and we needed to wakey wakey quickly quickly.

Anf jumps into the driver's seat with the speed of... Ahem. He jumps into the driver's seat, and starts up our Smiles. I jump into the passenger seat with the speed of a slowly awakening walrus having got stuck on an army of snails, pull out our passports and get ready to flash them to whichever official wants to see them.

Everything is breezy, until they say they want to have a look at the vehicle and ask me to open up the back.

Well, that was all still breezy to be fair.

It was when they asked what was in the jerry cans on the roof that it got less breezy, I guess.

I think naughty boy George would've said nothing, and so honest girl Stace tries to be more Anf : "nothing".

"What? In both? Nothing?" asks the official.

"Ah. No. The other one has some diesel in it." (Hey, I did a better job than honest girl Stace un-Anffed would have done - she would've volunteered that t'other was full without even being prompted. I'm learning!)

So, anyway, basically, we had to use it or lose it. Whilst Anf did his best to make a right meal of it (not sure if he did that to make the official feel guilty or what, but it didn't work!), the official explained that normally he'd take away the jerry can because they need to be completely clean. OK, mate. Inspecting all jerry cans through the border, are you?! Didn't think so. Diesel jerry can emptied into Smiles (thankfully there was space in the tank), we board.

I head straight for somewhere to sit/curl and sleep (or try to - it's so ruddy difficult trying to sleep on those boats - I swear they make it like that so you are more inclined to buy a cabin. Why wouldn't you have push-uppable arms, for goodness sake?!).

Anf sits in the cafe and I listen to his lungy coughs as I fall in and out of slumber.

See you in a few hours, buddy. I don't do mornings.

Legs dead, but a few hours slept, before we know it, it's 8:30am and we're being woken up by a very heavily French accented woman over the tannoy telling us in English that we're in Newhaven. Humph. This doesn't feel too fine. #takemeback

We hit the road, with the same joy and enthusiasm we had on the way out to Europe, but we both know the end is nigh...

We make progress around the south coast and stop in a little brewery chain pub in Havant for some brekkie ("Have you been here before?" "No I Havant....").

We scoff  (what we've come to do best), slurp and push on back to Brizzle in the handsome sunshine.

And that's it. We're home.