Wight Weirdos

The Gibson Family Blog

The Journey Begins, Just – Dresden Trip Part 1

Wow what a start to the trip. I got about 5 hours sleep on wednesday night. Started thur well catching the 6am ferry rather than 630. Everything fell apart just past Chichester when the hire car I was driving broke down.

After the AA came out and after much debate 7 people caught the train. The rest continued in the remaining 3 vehicles. We arrived in Dover just in time to buy tickets for 7 of us to cross channel on foot while the rest waited for the
train group to arrive. We just made 6pm deadline for car hire pickup! Once the rest arrived we grabbed bread and cheese from a hypermarket and headed towards Belgium. Nearly got stopped just into Germany by a massive police roadside search. Fortunately got waved through. Finally arrived at our first overnight to a warm welcome from the youth pastor despite it being 215am. The boys found me a real bed in a room on my own. What a nice bunch of lads!

Adventures Already

So the group of 19 children and 6 adults set off this morning to head for Germany. They managed to make it as far as Chichester without incident.

At this point the very nice hire car that martin was driving billows black smoke and they break down!

After the AA fail to fix the problem they manage to carry on with the journey. Chris takes a group on the train to Dover and the rest carry on in the cars, a hire vehicle arranged with the breakdown cover awaits them in France. The cars get to Dover but the train travellers are going to be a bit later so now Martin sets off with a group on foot to Calais. This is so he can pick up the new hire car (goodness knows how he managed this as I do all the talking when necessary when we are in France, but good on him!) before the hire company close for the evening, which it will have done if they wait for the train travellers to join them.

The last text I got said that he had managed to pick up the vehicle and was now in a hypermarket (not looking for wine but looking for grapefruit syrup for me, I know I’m a strange woman but he loves me) and was meeting the others later.

I have recieved one more text (in answer to my additional request as he was in a hypermarket anyway) which says only “Martin is driving” . I take that to mean that everyone is now together and they are back to driving towards Germany.

So this is my interpretation of day one (pieced together from texts I’ve received and a bit of input from Gillian so it may not be 100% accurate), goodness knows what the rest of their week will hold in store.