Mission Accomplished

Tuesday morning my Dad and I left Southampton at half 5 in the morning to head up to Birkenhead, Liverpool, and yes I was driving the same Luton van as before on the first trip over. We were due to leave Birkenhead docks at half 10 to get the ferry over to Belfast, NI. We took the M6 Toll to void the rush hour traffic, for some unknown reason my TomTom took us right into the city of Liverpool, North of the Mersey. We needed to be South in Birkenhead! We took the tunnel under and got across the other side. A few minutes later we got a call from NorfolkLine (the ferry company), as we were now late for check-in we were told there was no guarantee we would be boarded, great! When we got there we checked in no problem.

Despite being a day crossing we got a cabin. So as to keep the cost of the trip down I had only booked two day crossings, which meant we would have to spend a night in Belfast. The 'plan' (and I use the word very loosely) was to sleep in the NorfolkLine departure lounge. We knew we wouldn't get much sleep, so we thought we should get as much as we could on the crossing.

When we got into Belfast I knew roughly which way to go, plus we had a TomTom, and I had only been here just over a month ago, what could go wrong? I didn't know why, but I knew that we would be directed up the mountain, and to get back down and to where we needed to go I had to look for a sign on the mountain for Poleglass. After about 20 minutes driving on the mountain road I noticed there were no longer lights at it's base, the roads and houses were long gone. We had gone too far. We turned around, but still could not find the sign. After another 20 minutes which involved getting stuck in gravel in a side road, and walking into a very Celtic bar asking for directions in a very English accent (clever!) we found the sign and headed down the right road.

It was on the mountain that my Dad got a call from his Brother, my Uncle Matt. He had called to say he had booked us a room for the night in a Hotel in Belfast. What a hero! There would be no cold and sleepless night, we even had a cooked breakfast in the morning. Thanks so much Matt!

The rest of the trip went really smoothly. We loaded the van, had a good nights sleep, a nice breakfast in the morning, and at about 8 we headed for the ferry terminal. It was delayed by 45 minutes. There were some interesting characters on the return crossing. I'm sure there was a Russian cross dressing club on board, there was a guy with an awesome comb over (I would have loved to have seen him step out onto one of the outside decks!) and a girl from the NorfolkLine staff with a hairstyle straight from the 1600's, nice!

The return drive from Liverpool to Southampton was challenging to say the least. We were now really weighed down, it was poring with rain and blowing a gale. It was like it the entire journey!

Today I unpacked the van, everything is now safe in storage until we find a new place of our own. Mission accomplished! Thanks to Rob and Matt at Just Clear, my Dad and Uncles Matt and Will who all made the trip possible.