Driving to work

I’m not saying that its hard work driving 400-500 miles days through Europe but its tiring enough even when my husband is doing all the driving these days. I used to take a spell at the wheel of the truck so Steve could make phone calls or do admin of something to do with the job in hand or setting up the next trip. The reason I don’t drive the truck or our van any more is that the cost of insurance for an eighty year old lady driver like myself had become prohibitive. It seems unfair when I have a good record but you can see where they are coming from on that, in the commercial world and for foreign travel.

On this occasion we had a momentary scary moment when not long out of  the Channel tunnel, Steve pulled into a quiet rest stop along the motorway where we just wanted to reset the SatNav and get the audio book ready to start when there was a sudden shaking feeling to the truck. As I say we only intended to be there for a very short time, so luckily Steve had not turned off the engine, which was just as well because when Steve looked in the rear view mirror he saw immigrants attempting to open the back of the truck. As Steve turned to get out he saw one of them reaching toward the truck driver’s door. Thank God he had the presence of mind to pull away as fast as he could, shouting at me, “Hold tight- Immigrants”. This is not the first time something like that has happened. In fact Steve has discontinued his call at the last service station before Calais, on return journeys, to avoid the repetition of problems exactly like this one.

Whereas we do have sympathy with displaced people running from war torn country’s it is noticeable that most of these aggressive people, trying to break into trucks, are in fact young men, not badly dressed or hungry looking and they not family groups. So to us it seems more worrying. The fine for turning up in the UK and customs finding immigrants in your truck when you drive through after coming through the tunnel is enormous, so drivers must be vigilant.  

We have just spent three nights away from home on a work trip that took in France, Belgium, Holland, Germany and Denmark. We actually don’t even talk to each other that much until we stop for one reason or another, because we listen to Audible Books and so one must press the pause marker if we do want to comment on the story or if there is something that cannot wait to be said. Between Monday afternoon when we left home and last evening when we returned home we had devoured two very good books: Blue Moon by Lee Child which is the latest Jack Reacher story, which I hope they cast Gerard Butler in for the movie when they make it. I do like Tom Cruise in most of his films but for me he is not Jack Reacher who is 6’5” tall and hefty. It is another most excellent yarn and very entertaining even when there have been so many books in the series to date. The other book for the journey home was Robichaux, by another favourite author of ours James Lee Burke. I think this is No.21 or 22 in the series about the Louisiana Detective who one should watch their attitude when dealing with. So the plod along endless motorways passes quickly listening to a good book.

Steve and I both love traveling even when it involves loading, unloading, reloading and unloading again. Our European geography is very good. We like to go to different places, see different views and meet interesting people.  One of the people we met this time was also an older person maybe a bit younger than Steve though. He asked if we had drive through the night, but laughed when Steve said that those days were long gone. We leave that for younger folk who choose to do that to avoid the traffic hold ups. The traffic in Holland is every bit as bad as ours.

We both love maps, it is one of the many things we have in common and a lust for travel, we have loads on maps at home and look up everywhere that pops up in conversation or on TV or in books. We call ourselves Cartophiles, if there is such a work. We have a huge map of the USA on the wall of our turbo room (box room) at home and when we were first together, we lived in upstairs rooms in the original Body Shop in Brighton one of the now international chain. There, we plastered the stair well with a set of war time bombing practice maps of the UK.