Safety Fast
This morning I was up at a quarter to three and on the road to Dover by twenty past. The road was dry, the weather was clear, the full moon was shining, the hood on the Lotus was down and there was little traffic. Except for the road works on the M25 between the M11 and the A12, there was nothing to hold me up. Even the tolls at the Dartford Crossing were free! Is there another crossing in the world, with a bridge one way and a tunnel the other?
So I pulled in to the docks at Dover at five past five after just one hour forty five minutes of travelling. The car may be seventeen years old, but it hasn’t lost its verve and long legs.
The title of this topic is the old slogan that MG used to use with their sports cars and saloons for many years. It is still the name of the MG enthusiast’s magazine. My father had many MGs in his time from pre-war Midgets to mid-fifties Magnettes and thought it was a slogan that suited the now-gone marque. I like to think that I drove the Lotus that way both to Dover and afterwards on the three hour trip to Holland.
The ferry was half-an-hour late due to a mechanical problem, which was a first for Norfolk Line, and the captain apologised, but I still had visions of hairy and oily mechanics trying to replace big-ends or something even more serious. But they did make up some of the time and I left Dunkirk exactly on half-past-nine by European Time.
In front of me on the ferry was an AC Cobra. Not a copy, but a genuine one from the 1970s and we started off in convoy towards Ostend. He was going to the Nurburgring, to see a classic Grand Prix. One day, I’ll take the Lotus there on one of their experience days. Sadly it won’t be this year, as someone has a wedding on that day.
One thing that was a bit wrong, was that the couple in the Cobra were using a Sat-Nav. Surely that is wrong!
But is it wrong that Colin Chapman named his car after a flower, with names that showed spirit, like Elan, Esprit and Elite? Not for him Cobra, Miura, Panther or Thunderbird, which exudes power, but something that is more about class and agility.
A word of warning here. If you are taking a ferry to Dunkirk, don’t do it with an almost-empty tank, as filling stations are some way over the Belgian border. The Cobra stopped in the first one and I carried on to Ostend. The fuel also seemed expensive at €1.41 a litre. So perhaps fill up at Tesco at Dover.
At Ostend the fun started.
The traffic along the coast had been light and generally proceeding at about 120-130 kph. But after the Ostend traffic joined the road was very busy and Mercedes and others were storming about at well over the legal limit. It is in traffic like this that the agile Lotus comes into its own.
With the top down, you have perfect vision in all directions and because the road-holding is so good, you can almost drive sideways to avoid someone who isn’t looking. In one instant a big 4×4 pulled out on me and I’m sure he was looking right over the top. And the Lotus is bright yellow! Norfolk mustard is the actual name.
Gent and Antwerp followed in succession without any holdup and I was quickly through the latter city and on the road to Breda and Rotterdam. And just as the road had got angry at Ostend, it calmed at Antwerp. It must be the Belgians.
And whilst on the subject of the Belgians.
Can they please use consistent road signs with the same name for the same city throughout the country? I don’t care if they call Bruxelles, Timbuktoo, but please be consistent. I wish the Welsh would do the same too. I don’t care what name, but every town and village in Europe should only have one name. To make things fair it should be chosen by those that live there.
The last part of the journey past Breda, Dordrecht and Rotterdam was busy, but again my speed was well-up and I finally arrived in Den Haag (Note the Dutch name!) just three hours and five minutes after leaving Dunkirk and eight hours fifteen minutes from home. I could have gone quicker by easyJet from Stansted, but I couldn’t have taken as much luggage and especially my Brompton. The difference is probably three hours.
Incidentally for most of the last part of the journey I was listening to the late great Dusty Springfield on the CD player. Wonderful! Especially, as through the Drechttunnel, with the top down, I was playing one of her songs at full blast and it was reverberating off the walls.
I did get slowed on entering Den Haag, so I turned off the motorway and followed the signs to Scheveningen. If you ask the locals how you pronounce that town, the answer is now very non politically correct, as it refers to shaving someone described by an N-word. But it is linguistically correct.
Thou Shalt Not Sail on the Sabbath
What poppycock!
There appears to be a bit of a row on the Hebrides, about a ferry to the mainland on a Sunday.
The Hebrides is very much a marginal area of the UK, that needs all of the help it can get. And that includes tourists, who often have jobs to do, to pay for their holidays. They just might want to sail home on a Sunday, to start work on a Monday.
But as Caledonian MacBrayne, the ferry operator, feel it might be a case of human rights, they have to provide the service.
As someone, who believes very much in the rights of people to do what they want within reason, I’m very much behind the ferry company. And what right does a whole load of people, who say they believe in god, have to tell me what to do, provided I don’t break the law? Especially when I don’t hold their views. Although, as I’ve said many times before I stick to the humanist principles of all the world’s major religions.
My late wife originally did believe in god and taught in Sunday School, but in her last twenty years or so, she lost all that belief. As she lay dying, she did not once mention god or religion. That further enforced my personal view, that god is just a figment of those minds that want to control us.
I hope that I’ll die happy, but without help from any supreme being.
Feedback for Norfolk Line
I’ve now done three round trips on Norfolk Line between Dover and Dunkirk and all of them were done in the VIP class.
I filled in their form on the web site and this is my only complaint.
I am a coeliac and the one thing that is poor on the ferries is the availability of gluten-free snacks. In the VIP lounge, there is fruit which is good, but except for one trip there were no nuts, which would be great. Also, crisps were not gluten-free, but by careful selection, these can be gluten-free without costing any more.
As I travel from Newmarket to Den Haag regularly, it would be nice to eat a meal on board, but all of your offerings are not gluten-free, so I actually time the journey, so that I eat before I leave and then again at the other end.
The interesting point, is that your staff know about coeliacs and gluten-free, so your training is working.
Other than that everything is fine. But at least you don’t have a notice up like one of your competitors, which says that people with allegies are not welcome in the restaurants.
This was what the notice said on P&O.
Food Allergy Advice – Whilst every effort is made to maintain the integrity of all food served onboard, we regret that due to the complexity of our operations, we are unable to guarantee that any food will be free of food allergens.
It probably illustrates the usual failure of those in charge of catering to take account of allergies. Newmarket racecourse used to ignore it and now everybody knows about gluten-free meals.
Can we do anything about it? Yes, complain in a nice manner!
Windmills and Ferries
We spent an enjoyable day meandering down the Waal, after viewing the Water Line and the castle at Loevenstein. We crossed it three times on an assortment of ferries.
Ferry Across The Waal
The ferries were of a similar design to those that you get in London at Woolwich. But those are free, as opposed to the Dutch ones which were a couple of euros. I don’t think I’ve ever used three ferries in one day! But here in the heart of Holland, you can do it a lot more than that!
We finally ended up at Kinderdijk, which is a World Heritage Site. If you see pictures of windmills on a Dutch tourist poster, it is usually a picture from this area.
Kinderdijk
Close by the windmills are some of the largest Archemedean screw pumps, I’ve ever seen.
Archemedean Screw Pump at Kinderdijk
This is just one of four sets of these enormous pumps.
The Waal is not the sort of place that tourists would normally go. But they should!
Back on the Ferry
It’s now 9:15 UK Time and I’m back on the Norfolk Line ferry to Dover.
This time I had the cricket all the way from Holland until I went past Antwerp. But this time it wasn’t so good. England contrived to go from 196 for no wicket to 364 for 6, by means of some sloppy batting. You can never trust an Aussie cricket team until they’re beaten.
We just gave them too many breaks.
But it was quicker to take the route through Bergen op Zoom and the tunnels at Antwerp and then down the parallel motorway almost to Bruges. I didn’t see much traffic and the lights on the latter part of the journey weren’t too unkind.
I made the ferry with firty-five minutes to spare, despite taking nearly an hour to get round Rotterdam. We may complain about the M25, but it seems everyone has the same problem.
On the down side, the Maerske Dover has a rather bad vibration.
Another Case of Rip-Off Britain
I’ve just booked my return trip on Norfolk Line.
Can anybody tell me why I get charged for credit cards when booking Dover-Dunkirk and I don’t when I go from Dunkirk to Dover?
Sounds like some banking practice in the UK, which rips me off!
VIP on Norfolk Line
I’m actually posting this whilst travelling in VIP class on Norfolk Line between Dover and Dunkirk. For my extra £10 I get free coffee, tea, snacks and on this trip, a free glass of wine and wi-fi.
But the biggest benefit is you get to get off the boat first.
I think the one-way trip cost me £48, but VIP is per person, so if there are four of you it could almost double the price of the trip.
I’m actually watching Crincinfo for the Ashes and the BBC for the European Grand Prix.
The connection is slow, but the scores and placings get through.
The Woolwich Ferry
The Woolwich Ferry is one of London’s oddities.
I think I first used the ferry soon after I learned to drive in 1964 and I’ve used it every ten years or so. The pictures here were taken in November 2008, when I was travelling to visit someone in South London.
