The White Cliffs of Dover

Horses on the cliffs having their dinner

Dreaming of tomorrow

So long England

Étaples Military Cemetery

Thurs 11 – Fri 12 June 2015

Yes, there is a day missing – what happened on Wednesday? After cramming Bath and the Harry Potter Studio Tour into one day, we decided we were trying to do too much! Natalie was panicking that we had not booked our accommodation for Belgium or Amsterdam or confirmed our next ‘workaway’ host (concept to be explained later), so we decided against visiting Oxford and spent the day planning. Matt came up with the ingenuous idea to use the free wifi and free parking at motorway services/rest areas. This was great! We had a Starbucks and some lunch but the parking was only for two hours – I mean who really spends more then that at the services? So we went a few miles down the motorway to the next services for another two hours.

We stayed at our first Airbnb that night outside of London. We cooked our own meal, which was a nice change. The hosts were friendly and offered a bit of advice as they went traveling for a year as well. They went out to a friend’s birthday party so Matt took this opportunity to ask them if they watch Game of Thrones (missing episode 9 that Monday we were desperate!). Turns out that they had recorded it so we watched it on their lovely big screen in HD. Thanks Daniel & Kristy 🙂

That brings us to Thursday. We drove from London to Dover to visit the White Cliffs. We arrived at about 3:30 – a bit late but we had a picnic lunch on the cliffs and had a nice stroll. We stayed in a rather dodgy hotel in Folkestone. Actually the hotel was decent but the neighborhood was a little rough. Fish & chips was the only food on offer for our last meal in the UK which was rather fitting!

The next day was lovely and sunny with little wind – perfect conditions for sailing from Dover to Calais. We had a little trouble with the Garmin – she wasn’t used to being on the continent but we eventually cracked her.

We had a quick stop at the Etaples Military Cemetery – a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery that holds over 11,500 dead from both World War I and World War II. Quite moving yet a lovely peaceful place to be laid to rest.

We then headed to our workaway host located in Longueville-sur-Scie (20 minutes south of Dieppe). We are supplementing our travels by participating as volunteers in a work exchange. We do approx 25 hours a week of work in exchange for room and board. More on our experience of our first destination to follow.