Returning. A blur of exhaustion

Well it has taken me rather longer than expected to get round to doing this update about my return journey from England to home here in Bulgaria. I have been so busy and there has been so much going on that finding the time to sit and type an update about anything other than "what went on today" has been really hard. Today I have decided to make a start and hopefully complete it as well as I want it out of the way so I don't keep feeling guilty for not having done it. So, without any more faffing, let's see how much I can remember.

My final meal before leaving

So I was at John's and all ready to leave; he had helped me to load everything up and get the freezer into the trailer and then strap everything down nice and tightly and then he headed off to work. I did my final few bits and pieces around the house and made myself a quick snack before actually leaving, making use of the hotdogs and some lovely fresh bread Magda had brought from the bakery the day before. It doesn't look like much but it really did sort me out. I can remember washing up afterwards and feeling so very excited as the time to leave drew closer.

The face of a Beard holding a baby

I left around the time I had expected to and set the satnav to take me to CJC's house. The leaving process went well as I was able to pull up in front of the house and go back inside to drop the keys and the remote control for the gates. My drive to CJC's was really easy, Thomas pulling the trailer without any trouble and the views were lovely. I arrived quite early and so was able to get out and take the puppies (and now thinking about it, what tiny puppies they actually were still then!) for a walk around the block. I knocked on when I got back from the work and they were very happy to see me and I them; it was immense to see my lovely namesake and congratulate them both from both of us. I also got to give the final presents including a bottle for H to be given him on his 18th birthday.

Celebrating the arrival of H in style

We had long planned that I would take CJC up to the pub for a meal and to get him out of the house for an hour or so and we strolled up to the same one we'd been to as a foursome last year. The food was excellent and the company outstanding and we had a lovely time talking about everything and catching up. It seems strange to think that I won't be seeing CJC for ages now as I've managed to move to a distance that makes casual visits slightly awkward. I miss his whole family.

Short break to check the straps and let the girls run around

Too soon it was time to walk back to his house and for me to get into Thomas and start the journey down to Dover and my ferry. Hugs all round and we were off. I was testing out a bit of software on a mobile phone to do a stop motion capture for the whole journey and had found on the way to CJC's that the free version only recorded for an hour so I paid for the full version and set it going before leaving. I got to Dover very quickly indeed, stopping on the way to let the puppies out for a run and to give myself a leg stretch as well, and as I arrived it was raining a bit. I had a quick walk again with them then got my moose neck pillow out and dozed off for an hour or so, waking exactly at the right time to be loaded into the ferry.

I said goodbye to the puppies, climbed the stairs and found a bench to lie down on and eventually fell asleep, no thanks to the really noisy hordes of french adolescents running around for the entire voyage. I woke just before we pulled in and was able to join the queues and get to Thomas without too much delay. The journey from the ferry terminal out of France was very unpleasant indeed. After the short distance winding through the roundabouts to get out of the industrial estate you are suddenly thrown into the maelstrom of the motorway with screaming lorries flying at you from all angles and with the weather being not so great, raining hard, I found myself suddenly waking up very much after my doze.

Having some breakfast by the side of the road

About 6am UK time I left France and entered Belgium and I just kept going until just after 8 when I stopped to let the puppies have some breakfast, and make myself a bacon butty as well. We did well like this for the journey as there are regular laybyes and parking places where you can safely stop and the puppies are so well behaved they just stay near me anyway.

Germany, puppy exercise, and lunch

Soon enough I was back in the car and on the road again and by about 11.30 I entered Germany. This was brilliant as my plan called for me to maybe make Germany on the first day and here I was, doing so before lunch time. I carried on until I got a bit hungry and then stopped again, making some cheese, ham and crisp butties for myself, and letting the girls have a little run around with their leads tied to a lamppost.

A urine soaked patch of grass

I still wasn't feeling tired so I got back on the road after eating however about an hour or so later I started to flag and so, seeing the motorway church that I'd stopped at with my parents last year, I pulled over and attempted to sleep. My big idea of resting on this patch of grass was spoiled by the fact that Germans may give the impression they are clean people but they piss EVERYWHERE and it stank. I would see many an example of this where a driver was pissing in the bushes right next to a motorway service station. Not cool.

The motorway church

I pulled my stuff over to by where Thomas was parked and did manage to get about an hour of shut eye and when I woke I took the girls for a quick walk to see the church before getting back on the road.

Airport bridge over the motorway

As mentioned before I had some loose targets in my head for this journey and one of them was to make it to Frankfurt for the end of the first day. I was stuck in traffic going past the airport by about 4.30pm and therefore had smashed that target already. The one benefit of being stationary was that when an airplane went to taxi across the bridge over the road I could quickly snap a picture of it with the camera on the clamp in front of me. I've always wanted a picture of this and now I have one.

Heating up pasta for dinner

I kept going again and stopped about 7pm for my dinner and to let the puppies have theirs and get some leg stretching. They were doing amazingly well, as expected, and were sleeping almost the whole way so far without complaining. I cooked up some dried pasta packets for my dinner and then washed the bowl out by boiling water in it; this was a lovely meal and just what I needed.

Sticking plaster for the tarpaulin

I was still not feeling tired by this point however I had noticed some damage to the tarpaulin on the trailer. It wasn't flapping much at all however the motion of the suspension and the slight movement of the tarp was rubbing a hole where the top of the corner posts were. If I hadn't seen this it could have become a big issue however I got the packing tape out and reinforced both corners and this fix lasted all the way home.

Another sleeping place

I drove on for another half an hour before feeling myself beginning to nod and so I pulled up into a spot and had a doze. I was finding that no matter how hard I tried I could not sleep for more than about an hour or two at a time and this was no different. I woke up relatively quickly, feeling really well rested, and just got back on the road figuring there was no point in wasting time and laying in my sleeping bag if I was awake and could drive.

Lovely bacon butties to keep me going

I pulled over once more in the night for another snooze and then just before daylight by which time I think I was in Austria. The laybye I was in was far more populated than the one were A and I had almost been mugged earlier in the year, and I felt quite safe. I slept sat up in the front seat with the moose as a pillow again and again woke feeling really refreshed after a couple of hours each time. I was hungry, though, so before heading off I pulled the cooker out and made a bacon butty or three.

A photograph for my dad

It seemed that all of Europe is being dug up for roadworks during this trip and I was stuck in more traffic jams than I've been for ages. There was one particularly frustrating one where I crawled along for about an hour at 10mph up the single lane that was open only to suddenly accelerate after the car in front had driven past a piece of road-making equipment that was working on the two closed lanes. The entire delay, it seemed, had been caused by people slowing to look at a road digger. Very frustrating.

There is a lack of Harrison in this picture

I kept up my routine though of stopping for food and exercise for me and the puppies regularly, and pulling over for catnaps whenever I was overwhelmed with tiredness. In this way I made absolutely excellent progress despite the road works and heavy traffic and late morning on the third day since leaving Manchester I drove past where Harrison broke down and had to decide if I was going to go past to try and get the stuff we had left. I decided that, seeing as it was less than five minutes off my route, I would go for it however when I arrived there was no sign of him at all in the car graveyard. I saw the helpful one who spoke a bit of English and they denied knowing I was coming back so rather than cause a scene as there was obviously nothing I could do I said "no problems" and got back in Thomas and got on my way.

Getting ready to nap in Romania, with a wild dog close

A short while later I made it to the border with Romania and this was far easier for me than for the ten miles or so of trucks backed up. The queues were so bad they had done a variation of "operation stack" and made the roads one way with the right lane full of parked trucks and the left lane, normally coming towards you, open for cars. It was amazing to drive past so much trucking which wasn't going anywhere. There were no queues to speak of for cars and I was pretty much straight through and making the decision as to which crossing I wanted to go for. I decided to do the mountains and the way I had been with my parents and so head off down the new road which was smooth and almost entirely devoid of traffic. I was starting to feel a little tired again so about 7pm I decided to have a snooze in the first parking place I came to. I got the full bivvy out this time and settled myself down and got about two hours again before being woken up by the puppies barking. There were wild dogs around (which you can see in the video later if you pay attention) and I packed up and got on the road.

It got very dark shortly after this and started raining and I was cursing my decision to take a break as I had to negotiate some very dark roads with sudden corners in pitch black driving rain with lunatic drivers both going the same way as me and coming towards me. I survived OK and the weather passed and the driving got a little easier again. That's not to say they got anywhere near easy and when I hit the mountains around midnight it got very interesting indeed with the trucks wanting to go faster than I was going and overtaking me on the climbing lanes, or just the wrong side of the road. I hit "record" on the video on my phone to capture the excitement of this and you can hear just how tired I was by this point in my slightly rambling running commentary. It was hair-raising though.

The dam from a distance

I was starting to feel ready for another nap by this time so I kept a ready eye open for somewhere to stop. Pretty soon I found a layby and pulled into it only to be greeted within seconds by a policeman in a policecar who had followed me in. He didn't have a problem with me or anything about my vehicle, he just wanted to warn me not to stop there as there had been a lot of carjackings in the region recently. They were really friendly and when they saw Thelma and Louise (who I got out for a quick walk as I was stopped) they got into a lovely conversation about them and their own dogs. It was a really nice experience though it did put me on my guard so when, later, I was approaching the dam on the Danube that I really wanted to get a closeup photograph of and I pulled in to the carpark there and the white van with one light followed me in I took a deep breath, pulled straight back out and got out of sight as quickly as I could. As it happened just a little up the road was the carpark we had stopped in on the way with my parents so I pulled in there, got a long distance shot of the dam again, and went to doze, then decided to back Thomas in amongst a couple of eighteen wheeler trailers so I was a little less conspicuous. Shortly afterwards I saw the one lighted van drive past. Now I don't know that it was someone who wanted to jack me, but I'd always rather be safe than sorry.

Crossing into Bulgaria

I woke up feeling rested enough to continue but then got quite confused at a roundabout where you had to go away from the obvious direction to avoid going through a town centre. After a few U-turns (not very easy with a big trailer and feeling that tired) I was back making good progress and soon I was at the border and crossing into Bulgaria! I was home! What a feeling!

Not the best place I stopped on the journey

It took quite a while for me to find a vignette for Bulgaria but I wasn't too worried as most petrol stations sell them, just not those close to the border it seems. I attempted to avoid the really bumpy village we had gone through last year but still hit it and had to creep over the cobbles really carefully. The roads are hard work up there in the far north of the country and I was starting to be quite hungry so I began to look for a place to stop. It is an indicator of just how exhausted I was that when I did stop it was in a very narrow layby with trucks zooming past within feet of where I was sitting and it was on an uphill so I began to panic slightly about getting going again. After their breakfast and mine I didn't doze but got straight back on it and bless him Thomas got me moving without any trouble. What a relief.

And so I drove down out of the mountains, found a place for a vignette, went round Sofia (past many more roadworks) and then out along the road I know so well towards my home. They were doing even more roadworks on this road, replacing the bridges. Quite literally replacing them as they had people with pickaxes smashing the road away from around their feet and then further on bridges that were further down the process and were having the new surface put on. I was tired and even though I was desperate to get home I had to pull in to one of the service stations south of Sofia for another hour's kip. I worked out that with that I had slept about 10 hours in total since leaving CJC's house.

Arriving home, finally

Everything was going swimmingly and I decided to take the mountain road back so turned off the motorway and went through the villages that mean I'm getting close to home. It was just then that I heard it; a groaning sound from the hitch. I stopped immediately and got out and found that there may have been a problem between Thomas and Trailer but I wasn't totally sure what it was. Rather than panic I got back in and decided to drive really carefully and therefore I took the entirety of the remainder of the journey at 30mph or less and I only heard the sound a couple of times after that. I was driving along willing him to make it now that I was so close and as we came up the hill to the village, having text A to let her know we were there, I celebrated finally. The feeling was even better as I turned the corner, was greeted by my neighbours, and saw A stood at our gate with Rambo waving and taking pictures as I drove up. What a relief.

I didn't stop at the gate as it's quite a steep bit but pulled straight in and through and parked Thomas up on the patio then got out with the puppies to meet A and what a lovely reunion it was. It had been too long since I'd seen her and I had missed her loads! I think she had missed me also, or at least I hope so, but she'd done so well in my absence, what with getting involved in the village and other things that I could tell the decision we had made had been the right one. I stopped the video capture on the phone once we had greeted and it's above; I think it is interesting and I hope you agree.

So there you are; I'm sure I missed some things (like being fined by the Austrians for not sticking the vignette to my windscreen, whoops) but it's been a fair few weeks now since I got back. I'm glad I got this done and written up though as now I can stop thinking about it.