The end of our visit and return home.

We had not booked our return crossing on the EuroTunnel so that we were sufficiently flexible if we were needed. At Helen's request, we extended our stay in the flat and the UK by a week.

We still had a few things on our list, although we knew that it was unlikely that we would manage all of them. The most important outstanding job was to get Jim's wine up to his flat in Hackney and this meant the dreaded trip in London in a French car! Previous experience of driving around London on the wrong side of the car has not been good. Thankfully, there were no issues this time; we arrived safely and, having parked the car in Jim's parking slot, we walked down to a small Turkish cafe on Kingsland road and enjoyed our Gozleme, a Turkish flat bread stuffed with cheese, potato or spinach, or any combination. Delicious!

In the evening we ate at a very good Turkish restaurant which serves superb kebabs. We have eaten there many times and each have our favourite dish and always order that.

The following day, John went up to Cambridge to attend to a few things at our house and Pat returned to Broadstairs.

Our final meeting was with Andew and Elisa. Andrew is an old friend of John from school in Northern Ireland. We had been trying to get together for a few years but failed up to this point.

We met in a pub at East Malling and spent an interesting couple of hours catching up.

Now it was time to clean the flat, pack up the car and take Ernie out for a scoot and an ice cream. Once we are on the promenade and there is no traffic, the scoot usually just means trying to keep up with Ernie for as long as he wants to scoot. On this occasion, we ended up at Stone bay.

It may have been cool, but Ernie is game for the beach at almost any temperature. We were trying NOT to get our feet wet and had good fun on our way back waiting for the high waves without getting drenched

We ate with the family that evening and so time for a cuddle with Lenny; here is a happy Grandad.

The next morning, we set off bright an early for the EuroTunnel. There was a short delay while we retrieved John's passport from the flat, but nevertheless, we made our appointed checkin time with 2 minutes to spare.

We stopped at our usual overnight stop in Montluçon in the centre of France and enjoyed a good meal at a Le Grenier à Sel, where we had eaten before.

Unfortunately, we had a slow pucture and so the next morning, John pumped up the tyre sufficiently that we could limp round to a tyre repairer, who identified a nail in the tyre and repaired the tyre in minutes.

As we drove south, chinks of blue began to appear between the clouds and the countryside became very colourful and as we drove on, we anticipated an evening on the terrace with a glass of wine.

 

Posted with Blogsy