Booked!

We’ve only gone and done it! We’ve actually booked a ticket on le shuttle – so officially we are off to France on the morning of Saturday 30th March. After the last few weeks of near constant rain and floods it feels good to be able to focus on something else as the rain has certainly taken it’s toll here – another wall collapsed this week and it’s been so wet that rowing has not been possible.

While we won’t plan a route we have a rough idea of how we will get to Baku. As we have to go round the south side of the Black Sea we will head for Istanbul and cross into Asia. It’s likely that we will start with a few long days driving until we cross south of the Alps, so that we can find some warmer weather.

As the van is just about ready to go we’ve been busy sorting jobs here – my son Rob is looking after the house and cats while we are away, but we don’t want to leave him a load of problems.

We’ve also been doing a fair bit of work getting our “social” right – so that we can share what we are up to. On top of that we’ve splashed out on a drone to film and get a different view of the trip.

The inaugural flight of the drone was in the kitchen and completed without incident although the cats weren’t too impressed and promptly left the house.

I asked Juliet what we should call the drone and she came up with Didymus who apparently is Thomas the Apostle – or doubting Thomas. It’s a matter of modern high tech meeting old world automotive. Certainly Didymus is very easy to fly – the van less so when it comes to driving.