This is the story of our honeymoon; a long story, so I will break it into several parts.
When planning the European road trip for our honeymoon there were three specific events that we wished to attend, firstly we had booked a madcap lap of the Nordschliefe circuit at the Nurburgring in Germany. From there we would be taking in two Grands Prix; one in Monza and then the following weekend in Spa. In order to fit all of these events into our schedule it was necessary that we booked the entire trip in advance.
I spent several months looking at different web sites trying to find the best prices and locations for each of our planned stops. If you asked George he would probably tell you that the honeymoon took more planning than the wedding… Due to the fact that we were aiming to drive over 4000 miles in three weeks we had to be totally organized at all times – the confirmation for each of our ferries, channel tunnel, hotels, activities were all printed and placed into the specially designed honeymoon book – a lever arch binder, full of plastic pockets, one for each day.
On the first morning we took an early ferry from Dublin port – George is well known for his dislike of being on the water, so I had promised him that the journey back and forth to Holyhead would be the only ferry of the entire trip. Our aim for day one was to cross Wales and England, take the channel tunnel into France and reach our first hotel, five minutes drive from the far end in Calais. Arriving in Holyhead at 10:00 we had ten hours to make the descent to Folkestone – simple one would think? Not when most of your journey is on the M6 and M25 motorways! Road works, traffic and general bad driving conspired to make us later and later as the day went on.
Luckily for us, the owners of the channel tunnel are aware of how difficult it is to predict journey times over long distances, so when you book your specific slot for the crossing, you are then able to arrive up to two hours before or after that time and take the next available train for the same price. Even so we barely arrived in time just under two hours after our planned departure. A simple check in procedure, time for a quick bite to eat and we were away. Driving onto the train is quite easy and you just have to hold your nerve as you drive along all of the carriages. The staff work efficiently and quickly give you instructions to lower your windows and not to cross between the cars.
The crossing was quick and smooth and the biggest surprise that we received was the fact that our ears popped on the way down. You expect this on an airplane but we had forgotten that we were descending fairly deep under the English Channel. 25 minutes later and we were driving on French soil constantly reminding each other “drive on the right, drive on the right!� Our GPS received its first test and successfully led us to our hotel.
The next morning it was up and awake early once again, for another madcap dash across France, Belgium and into Germany to reach the Nordschliefe circuit. Five hours to cover 400 kilometres, surely this was enough? Things were looking good until once again we hit some road works or an accident – we’re not really sure… All we saw was a tailback stretching miles into the distance… unfortunately for us this occurred right at a location where the GPS had no knowledge of the new motorways we were traveling on!
We quickly decided to take the next off-ramp, which dropped us into a small German village. We used a combination of techniques; following the main stream of cars who seemed to know where they were going and partially my innate sense of direction to bypass this village and get us out onto the motorway a few miles further on. From there it was plain sailing, but simple fact was we had too many kilometers to cover and two little time… Would we still make the lap at the Nordschliefe, or would we miss out?
