I’ll start here by saying how much i hate bloody internet explorer.
3rd damn time I have written this post!
The Trip Home
As you can imagine judging how things had gone previously, the intense planning put into the journey home meant very little when brought into practise. The journey which had taken us only one whole day to get to the house, took us two on the way back. A single long journey from the house to Calais, and another long trip back home to Manchester.
The trip to calais was a whole new level of fun in itself. In order to let L regain some of her sanity, I let her drive the big citroen back to Calais while i joined my dad in the fun bus. (Note: Citroen has soundproofing, is comfortable, and can comfortably do 90mph, Fun bus is a knackered old renault trafic converted into a minibus that finds it very hard to get above 60mph and is also extremely noisy!). My dad and I left the house first at 10:30, with the optimistic hope that we would arrive in calais by 6pm. L and the others would leave a bit later, after picking up the essential paperwork and locking up the houses. As this wouldn’t take very long, they passed us half an hour down the road at some absolutely stupid speed which only made me jealous.
We continued to trundle along, and an hour after they had passed us, and while Dad and I were getting up the stupidly large hill out of Rennes, I got a call…
“I’ve forgotten the passports.”
Yes, it happened again. After I had left my passport in Leeds on the way there, L had neglected to pick up the wallet containing hers and my dads from the house and she had only realised this 2 hours from the house. Cue whining, whinging and a little bit of crying from R in the back. After having a good laugh and checking the bags for the passports, my dad and I trundled on stopping for fuel and Mc Ds at Caen.
7 - 8 hours later we arrived in Calais, knackered and desperate for a shower. Despite the slowness of the van, the citroen had not managed to catch us up yet. So we showered, waited, and I finally got myself an internet fix as the B&B motel had wifi! 
That night, after much continued whining, we dined at the lovely Tutti Quanti in the cite europe and had a late night. D took it upon himself to gorge himself on various chilli products (jalapenos, chilli oil and spicy meats) which gaurenteed us an unpleasant day following. I really, really, REALLY hate it when he does this (not the first time).
I didn’t sleep well that night, and, as it happens, neither did anyone else. I found it endlessly difficult to sleep and I felt extremely queasy. This therefore resulted in me not only falling out of bed (in such a noisy fashion that i woke everyone up, hit my head and managed to be awake enough to swear in russian) but I also had a nice fit which resulted in me being unable to breathe and vomiting a couple of hours later. After this escapade R managed to fall out of bed (impressive considering she was in the middle) and her crying kept us up the rest of the night.
lovely ¬_¬
We got the ferry 11:30am the following day and hit good ol Blighty by 12:30pm UK time. We proceded north via a slightly deviated route (M20 was blocked and crashes on the M1). At 5 we got a txt from L and Dad saying they were at the Hilton Park services near birmingham (they arrived in the UK 2 hours ahead of us). So we sped ahead so we could meet them, and meet them we did! We said Hi, Goodbye, and See you Later as we refuelled and finished the last leg of the journey home.
We got home around 6pm ish, and K, D and R came home to the surprise that their house had been cleaned and decorated by K’s parents. They did a damn fine job too. Nice surprise for when you came home, i personally returned home to find a stack of bills, a bin that needed emptying and stank, and an electric meter which had just ran out. Lovely.
There, finally, France all written up! 
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