Keep on truckin'

Fancy hiring a van, filling it to bursting point with home furnishings and industrial equipment, driving it 500 miles across five countries, unpacking it all, taking an overnight break, completing two trips to Ikea, then driving it all the way back to your starting point? No? Funnily enough, I didn't think so!

This was the Great Road Trip of 2013, Mr. O and I and a large selection of CDs and snacks. I do so love a road trip (the allure of buying mounds of chocolate and M&S service station lunches has a lot to answer for), but this one pushed it, even for me. Talk about a numb bum! The M25 on a Friday evening and nearly running out of petrol 40 miles from home were both fun times too. Oh, we've got stories for the grandkids!

We laughed an awful lot though and I was very proud of Mr. O for doing most of the driving (I'm generally pretty crap at maps, but I've got a geography degree, so I was chief navigator - no wrong turns, woohoo!). One of the loveliest parts of our trip was a delicious picnic in the back of the van, in a Carrefour car park near Calais. Shouldn't have been romantic, but strangely, it was. I think it must have been the heat and the fact that we were eating actual food, not McDonald's or packet sandwiches.

Mmmm, look at that picnic! Fresh bread, rotisserie potatoes, ham and pate (I asked for 'un petit peu', but this wasn't good enough for the nice French man behind the counter, who completely ignored my gesticulating and cut me a proper wedge - clearly I wasn't being French enough for his appetite), croissants for breakfast at home the next day, wine for Mr. O and orange syrup for me (the taste of childhood holidays). What you can't see, of course, is the mounds of fresh fruit and vegetables, just out of shot, obviously...

Another lovely moment of our trip? Seeing this sight as we crossed the bridge back home. Never mind the fact we still had an hour and half to go, it was the beginning of the home straight, woop woop!