Hot on the heels of our Norwegian adventure, Ellen & I headed off on a 4-country, 1.350km dash on the weekend of 8-10 September with the UK as destination so to have a (quick) visit with Sharon, over from South Africa on a break for a month. This would also give us the opportunity to visit with Marcelle & Robert, long overdue, at their home in the vicinity of Oxford. We elected to cross using Le Shuttle, a first for us, and a great experience (a little more flexible timewise than the comparable ferry crossings).
En route we, together with Sharon & Marcelle, also visited our uncle John in Rottingdean. We were treated by him to a lovely carvery lunch, and spent a further couple of hours with him in his pretty garden. Our further onward journey was delayed somewhat by Friday afternoon/evening traffic on the London Orbital, but we were well on time to catch most of the rugby WRC 2023 opening match (France v New Zealand) …!
Saturday launched with a lazy start, a full breakfast, and was followed by an afternoon visit to Oxford – it really was too hot to do anything expansive, but we managed to get some tourist goodies purchased. We returned to Marcelle & Robert’s home, temperatures still sweltering, and rounded off perfectly with a braai including all the trimmings, and a good catch-up on all fronts – Marcelle & Robert appear to have settled in nicely to UK life.
After a good Sunday breakfast we commenced our journey home, including a quick coffee stop with Andrew & Linda – also a long overdue visit (🙂), and good to see them again – before getting back to Folkestone. Unfortunately traffic pressure delayed us, but the aforementioned flexibility came into play and we were able to get on the next train without any problems. Heavy traffic in Belgium added a further substantial delay to our ETA, but it helped being able to stream the last two WRC 2023 matches of the day in the car (South Africa v Scotland, and Wales v Fiji) …!
