grant and helena's excellent adventure: Oxford to Dover

After getting our van serviced in Oxford and looking around for another bike yesterday - we set off for London to set Katie.

One of Katie's neighbours walking his ferrets, as you do!

We caught up with Katie and Benjamin at Twickenham, we spent some great time with them at her apartment before we took Ben for a walk down to the Thames. A great little area by the water with some great little parks.

Benjamin getting into Angry Birds game.


Benjamin waiting to go for walk

We had a great walk around Kings Park and Benjamin kept a lookout for squirrels as well.

Katie and Ben in Kings Park

Ben leading the way

Benjamin feeding a squirrel

After farewells in the carpark at Twickenham we had to negotiate afternoon traffic through London to get back to Traci and Tim's place for a farewell dinner, as this was the last visit before heading to Dover.

We managed to squeeze into a tight park in their street and waited until Traci came home from work.
We had a neat vegetarian Indian night out before saying our goodbyes and heading off to Dover to catch the ferry for Calais.
By the time we left we were dog tired and kept getting satellite problems with our GPS, adding to the problems was the main tunnel under the Thames being closed for repairs. We spent well over an hour getting re-directed around London as our GPS tried to send us back to the closed tunnel.
We eventually got over using Tower Bridge which looked spectacular at night so we felt a little better seeing that at least.

Finally out of London we pulled over at a service area and had a sleep...
We eventually finished our journey to Dover at about 3:40am and pulled into wharf area set aside for people waiting for early ferries.
Down to the ferry and a smooth crossing to Calais.

in the queue

ye olde white cliffs of Dover

Coming off the ferry

Once off the ferry we headed up the coast to Dunkerque and settled on a caravan park at Dray-Dunes. We walked from our park to the coast and saw evidence of the Pill Boxes etc scattered through the massive dune areas. I think the low tide mark is one of the lowest I have seen. A cold and desolate coastline, for which you would have to be keen to want to swim there, even in summer.


Meeting the locals - lucky the door was locked.					A bit of a look through Dunkerque and there are dogs at every turn. Shops looked good, but you can't get distracted this early in the piece - Helena begs to differ.