Cashpoints on Belgian and Dutch Motorways
I needed some euros on the way home and couldn’t find a cashpoint on the motorway.
Beware! After all, most garages and motorway services in the UK have them.
Countdown to Dunkirk
This post is for my own information, as I always forget the length of the last part of the journey to Dunkirk from the junction of the A18 and A10 at Jabbeke near to Ostende and Bruges. Jabbeke has a large service station on both sides of the motorway, so it is sensible pitstop both ways.
It took forty minutes from Jabbeke to the ferry at Dunkirk. Remember that the Dunkirk ferry is some way west of the actual town at junction 24. At the moment you should add another five minutes for bridge repairs west of Dunkirk. If they are bad, you can actually go into Dunkirk itself and take the D601 to the port.
Incidentally, there is a BP garage at Dunkirk on the motorway. I usually fill up there with diesel for the Jag as it’s cheaper than in the UK. But petrol is more expensive, so the Lotus comes through empty.
Don’t be caught out though with fuel when taking the ferry for Dover to Dunkirk. You have to travel almost to Jabbeke to get fuel on the motorway. Once I had to go off to look for petrol for the Lotus. Judging by the amount I put in that day, I was running on the fumes in the tank.
Disorganised and Unfair Olympics
The Winter Olympics in Vancouver have come in for a lot of criticism. I’m not going to be too outspoken, as we have the Summer Games in London coming up, but it does strike me that the Canadians have made some fundamental mistakes, that with hindsight could have been avoided.
They could have done nothing about the lack of snow, unless of course they could have found a way to move Europe’s and the United States’ unwanted snowfalls to where they were needed.
But to me one thing stands out. The Olympic flame is the centrepiece of any Games and they have surrounded their’s with a fence, that obscures it to the public. They say they were worried about vandals and the like, but it would not have been beyond the wit of the designers to protect it with say a moat and a low safety rail. I suspect if they’d asked the keeper of the monkeys at Vancouver Zoo, he would have had a much better idea!
They got a lot of others things wrong, like the finances, but then they did in Montreal too.
I would also criticise them for giving their own competitors more time to try out the tracks and courses, in the hope of winning more medals. I hope we don’t adopt the same attitude for 2012 as Games should be remembered for fairness not cheating.
But lastly, I will criticise them for one small thing, that would have been so easily overcome by a small amount of replanning. The medal ceremony for the ladies’ skeleton bob was held at three in the morning UK time, which was an absolutely wonderful idea for a once-in-thirty-years event for the UK. As it was 24 hours after the event, they could and should have scheduled it for a convenient time for the UK’s news networks.
But then they had expected a Canadian to win!
As I have said many times before, all major projects and events are often judged by the attention to detail by the organisers. Canada has failed with the details.
London 2012 must take note. According to this blog on the BBC, they are!
Skullduggery on Eurotunnel and P&O Ferries Websites?
I am in Holland and usually keep my travel plans rather flexible. If the weather is crap then I might go early or if the weather is good then the reverse might happen.
Last night, I decided that it would be convenient to have lunch in Den Haag and then drive to the ferries at about 16:00, catching the 20:00 Norfolk Line ferry out of Dunkirk for Dover. This would get me home about 23:00, which would be a sensible time, as it would mean I probably wouldn’t need to find any change for the Dartford Crossing. I’m not bothered about the money, as it is only a tiny proportion of my expenditure, but sometimes finding a 50 pence piece is not easy.
But I then found out at about 22:00 or so that the 20:00 was not running today. The previous one would mean I would miss lunch and the later one, is just too late at my age.
So I looked at Eurotunnel for a suitable departure. There was one at 20:40 or so at £73, which was just a little bit more than the ferry. The site declined my AMEX card, probably because I put a number in wrong, as I’d used it earlier in H0lland. So no worry, I’ll use another card. But when I rebooked the cheap price had gone and they wanted me to pay £127 or even more. I was so angry I couldn’t remember the real value.
So I checked P&O. I got a similar price, but after accepting it, when I went to add the credit card it had jumped from £50 to £100.
Now I know the prices go up at around midnight, but I was about half-an-hour before the witching hour and in the middle of an accepted transaction.
So I decided to skip lunch in Den Haag and take the 18:00 on Norfolk Line. At least I should be able to get a nice gluten-free meal on their ferries! I know from past experience that P&O regard all those with allergies as lepers.
This morning I checked the prices again. Norfolk Line was just a few euros more, Eurotunnel was £129 and the P&O web site was overloaded.
I know where I’ll be putting my business in future.
Gluten Free Lunch on Norfolk Line
I travelled out for a quick weekend away hoping to shake off the effects of the flu I somehow caught last weekend. I’ve had the jab too. I drove the Jag to Dover to get on a ferry through the Thursday on afternoon traffic and only just made the boat. The problem was the queues at the Dartford Crossing, as there were just not enough toll booths open to take the £1.50. As I noted previously, when you get there with coins you’re through quickly, but the outside lane is blocked by those without the correct change. People don’t think.
I haven’t eaten on the Norfolk Line boats before, as when I first travelled a couple of years ago, I asked about a gluten-free meal in the restaurant and the friendly steward said he didn’t know if there was any flour in the meals. So I took the sensible action as most coeliacs do and went hungry. But this time as I knew I had a long drive to Holland along the food deserts that coeliacs call motorways, I decided to ask again if there was something that was gluten-free.
So I looked at the menu in the Bistro and asked about the sea bass which looked promising. It came with a salad, fresh vegetables and potatoes. As it was under a tenner, I thought I’d give it a try, as at that price, if I abandoned it, it wouldn’t be a financial disaster.
- Sea Bass Meal – Norfolk Line
I have had better sea bass, but not often and certainly not at £9.50.
I actually ate it in Winterton Class, as I wasn’t travelling with the riff-raff. This meant that for an extra £8, I was in a virtually empty cabin with a steward ministering to my needs with free nuts, fruit, soft drinks and coffee. I also got to be the first off the boat.
Nicholas Winterton
There has been a lot of outrage over Nicholas Winterton’s interview on Radio 5 yesterday. Here’s The Times for example. I heard it and felt that on the one hand he had been stupid and on the other he had talked a lot of sense.
I usually travel Second Class on trains. I have a railcard which gives me discount, so I find it good value. But at certain times, I always travel First to avoid such things as families, spotty youths with over loud iPods, mobile phone users and over-crowded carriages. I also do it, when I have something complicated to read.
Where Winterton was right was when he said MPs should be entitled to First Class travel. If I was travelling with perhaps confidential papers about constituents or sensitive matters, I would always sit in a single seat in First, so that my neighbour couldn’t read the problems of Mrs. Smith with local hooligans.
Where he was wrong was in that he betrayed the arrogant attitude that so many of the great and good show. I have known four MPs well. Two were out and out nasty and grasping people and the others were totally charming and got things done. Who were the good? Gwyneth Dunwoody and John Gummer. I’ll let the others take their guilt to their graves. By the way none of the nasty were Tory.
I would love to have the late great Brian Redhead‘s view on Nicholas Winterton. Winterton was Brian’s MP and despite being on the opposite side of the political divide, I seem to remember they had a firm friendship.
Nothing is ever what it seems.
Readers Digest
So the Readers Digest has gone into administration. Although reading their web site doesn’t show anything is amiss.
I’ve never read it, but I have put quite a few pieces of their junk mail into the bin. Hopefully, that will stop now!
But perhaps it shows how we’ve moved on and their publication is past its sell-by date. After all the US parent had to file for bankruptcy protection last year.
Cabinet on the Road
Prudence likes to take the Cabinet on the road to have meetings in different places. But as this article in The Times states.
The Cabinet Office has gone out of its way to play down the cost of sending the Cabinet out of London even though mandarins originally opposed the concept. A parliamentary answer suggested that the first in September 2008, held in Birmingham where there are key marginal seats, cost £72,756.
But as with many things Prudence and NuLabor say, the devil is in the detail. And the figure above doesn’t include security by the local police. This was said about one visit to Leeds.
Only West Yorkshire Police has so far revealed the cost of a visit: £130,000 was spent on security at the Government’s second Cabinet meeting, held in Leeds in November 2008, trebling the cost from an initial £67,198 to £197,198. The Prime Minister’s eight Cabinet meetings have cost the taxpayer an average of £200,000.
I’m all for government learning more by visiting different places, but surely if they all decided to get on Eurostar to have a meeting in Paris and then left immediately afterwards for London, they would learn little about the French capital. It would always be better to hold the meeting at the most mutually convenient place and then visit where necessary afterwards.
It would also seem that Prudence and his cronies were economical with the truth.
Will I Be On The Busway Soon?
This slogan is now displayed on all the new Stagecoach buses bough for the Cambridge Busway.
At least someone hasn’t lost their sense of humour.
The Anonymous Widower 