Arrived home at 0700 this morning after another 900 mile slog that started at 1845 on Monday after a full day packing up the gear and polishing the bigest panels on the topsides before bringing the polisher home (not enough room on the boat!). I drove until 0130 to get 300 miles done and leave an easy 380 for the whole of Tuesday. It would have been more but I accidently got into the centre of Lyon and was trapped for over an hour as all the exits towards Paris seemed to be closed off.
The car has been faultless for the whole 1800M except that I must have killed off the (15 year old) original Toyota battery the other day with the laptop, and it slowly got worse & worse as the trip went on. It struggled to start even after stopping for fuel (which I have to do three times - four if you count the automatic serve & pay yourself pump that I couldn't get anything out of!).
I slept in some services on the comfy bed in the back as I'm bringing the mattress from the spare cabin home and set off at 0730 on Tuesday. I arrived at Dunkerque at 1600 and went into a lorry park to reverse the back end up a bit of buldozed barrier which was the only unlevel ground I could find for miles. I thought I might just get enough height to bump it off - if the crunching of the glasss as I went up hadn't flattened the tyres - I'd already changed a flat on the front before I'd got out of the boatyard.
I laid on my bed for 7hours watching the illegal immigrants trying to sneak into the lorries and wondering if all the lorry drivers thought I was the worst driver ever for parking the back end of my car on the only uneven ground anywhere in sight.
At 2300 I rolled off the hill and struck it up without the starter, and drove through customs to the proper waiting area hoping that I could get just one more start out of it at 0145. I didn't care if it didn't start at Dover as it's all downhill from the top car decks, just a bit dodgy getting your leg in and the door shut before you get to the narrow sloping bit after you've pushed off.