Monday, August 06, 2007

Day Two - Sunday 5th August

M wakes up at 6.15am, asking for milk as usual. A seems amazingly awake, whilst I struggle to open my eyes.
It is usually the other way round in our house when the alarm goes off. I did have a disturbed night though, first struggling to get to sleep because of my headache, then getting cold and not being able to find the duvet. Did have a nice dream about Julie Roberts though. Not sure what it was about, just remember that she was in it.


We decide to rearrange the van before we leave, so that at least future stops may be less painful than the previous nights. I suspect that we may have a few more side-of-the road overnighters before the 2 months is up, but its not really a problem, and it does save us some money!
We may also have got ourselves sorted out properly in the van by the time 2 months is over too!

Leave the parking place at about 8am, to find somewhere to have breakfast. Travel for about 20 minutes and find a service station, with another nice restaurant/cafe. Share croissant au chocolat and phili on roll. I get my morning fix of coffee (2 in fact, to keep me going!). M charms one of the waitresses into giving him a children's coffee (frothy milk), an amaretto biscuit and a lollipop, which he ignores my pleas to not eat quite yet, and then complains that his teeth are sticking together!

M is finding this all a bit daunting I think. The van is a fascinating place for an almost 3 year old with all its switches and buttons and cupboards and nooks and crannies. Unfortunately I am so terrified that he is going to break something as it all seems rather delicate, that I seem to be saying 'Don't touch', 'No' and 'Be Careful' a rather lot. Still its just something to add to the long list of things that M seems to be currently holding against me.

My feet are swelling up quite badly, a combination of hot weather and sitting still for so long. I really hope that they aren't like this for whole of the trip. It will annoy me. Have been sitting here, trying to move them around a bit, but they still look like lumps of meat on the end of my legs. Any remedies greatly appreciated.

We hope to stop at about lunchtime and get some bread, cheese and ham for diy sandwiches, but the service station we stop at has nothing of the sort. CB radios, seat covers, dirty dvds, crisps, biscuits and sweets, but no bread.

To be continued......

….continuing this several days later so have sort of forgotten exactly what happened, except that we had planned to stop in Clausthal-Zellerfeld in Germany, but as we were making such good time we decided to continue further up the motorway to Soltau.Really glad we did, as it was a great campsite. We managed to get a pitch right next to the playground so M was happy as we made dinner and again tidied the van – its all we seem to be doing!

He managed to annoy a 9 year old by insisting on taking sand from the ramp he had just built, although the 9 year old tried to get his own back by asking us quite insistently if we had seen his blue car, looking at M all the time he was asking us!

The toilet/shower block was absolutely fabulous. Real hotel quality. The radio was constantly piped into each toilet and shower room, and they had cool family bathrooms. I can tell that I will be boring people with my appraisal of each and every campsite, of which there are going to be many, seeing as we are staying in a lot of places only one night!

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