Travels

One of my nieces was recently married in Greece. I didn’t go, but while I was talking to her about travel, she was impressed when I told her I’ve been to 15 different countries outside of the UK. But it’s not as impressive as it might sound, ‘cos only 4 of them were holidays/vacations. I went to Sweden last year, USA in 2010, Egypt in 1999, and Spain in 2002. I’ve done booze-cruises to France/Belgium, when I was working at the brickyard, working a 7 on, 7 off shift pattern. Because I’d done a lot of driving on the continent, I got lumbered with driving the mini-bus that myself and 7 of the others on my shift, hired for the trip. I didn’t mind, but they started drinking on the outbound ferry at 9.30 a.m. and a couple of them carried on drinking throughout the day. At one point I got my revenge for the frigging about in the back. Several needed to relieve themselves, so I left the motorway, and stopped under a bridge. Once they were all lined up, and doing the deed, hidden by the mini bus, I pulled away and stopped 50 yards along the road! But I’m digressing. My previous experience of driving abroad was, when I lived in Denmark, and got a job driving a truck for Lego. That got me to Germany, Switzerland, Holland and Belgium. In 2008, the firm I work for now, got a contract, moving Red Bull Air Race equipment from venue to venue, and on one trip, they were short of drivers, so I was asked if I’d stand in for one who was taking his family to Spain during the time of the trip. Myself and one other driver, John, (aka; Camp Freddie, Gloria, Princess. Not ‘cos he’s gay, but because he tarts his truck up.) left on a Friday, and drove to Dover, took the ferry across to Calais, and drove through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, and Austria, into Slovenia, where we each had a load of paper to deliver to a place in between the mountains. Then we made our way north to Hungary, and on up to Budapest. All that, took ’til the Wednesday night, when we parked up in a service area, among 7 other trucks from the same firm. I was pretty amazed next morning, when I pulled the curtains back, and the first thing I saw out of one window, was a branch of MacDonalds, on the other side of the motorway, and when I pulled the curtains away from the screen, there was a huge Tesco sign about 200 yards away! Budapest was an amazing city, and initially I was a little put out that I would be leaving the following day, but then another driver wanted to swap trailers with me, ‘cos he wanted to get back to UK as soon as he could. So I ended up spending 5 days there.
When we left there, on the Sunday night, there was a convoy of 11 trucks, but we stopped for coffee only 2 hours after leaving. Then again after a further 2 1/2 hours. Myself and several others, dcided that it would take forever to get to Portugal at that rate, and we needed to be there by Wednesday night. We went back down to and through Slovenia, and this time, straight over the border into Italy. By this time, because I’d had to stop every time we came to a toll plaza, I’d had to cross the cab and show a card, I’d started to get behind, but fortunately, one driver, a guy named Ken, had noticed and was livid, that the other drivers weren’t allowing for the disadvantage I had. He knew I didn’t have any maps or GPS, ‘cos I’d been told by the transport manager, that I’d be folllowing John “every inch of the way”. But John had left Budapest, less than 24 hours after arriving. So Ken ‘adopted’ me. Because we were driving our maximum hours, and resting the absolute minimum, we got down through Italy, France, Spain and into Portugal, by the Wednesday evening. At one point, we went wrong, and were tearing around back streets in Porto, and turned into a side street that didn’t have a proper surface. Just gravel, which was bone dry, and therefore, dusty. Ken was driving fast ‘cos we were running short of legal driving time, and he was annoyed at having gone wrong, and I was driving fast, just to keep up with him. So we kicked so much dust into the air, you could hardly see the houses. Funny for me, not so funny for the residents! We eventually reached the TIR park where some of the others were – including the driver who’d been so desperate to take my trailer and get home early! There are a couple of stories to tell about the 24 hours we spent in Porto, but I won’t do that just now. On Thursday evening we left Porto, and drove empty, all the way up to and through Spain, and reloaded clothing for T K Maxx, just over the French border. There were 3 of us by then, and Derek and I loaded for Wakefield, Yorks, while Ken was going to Birmingham. We finally got home to Surrey after a total of 19 days away. Good fun, and I found it very interesting, but I wouldn’t do it full time now. I don’t fancy going back to living most of my life in a metal box.