InvictaMoto's Family Travels

We finally arrived about 2010 local time. A total of 10 hours on the road with a few short breaks. This was from home admittedly via Reggie's kennels. Traffic horrific from Antwerp to about Amersfoort. It took 55 minutes to get around Antwerp on their ring road. F*** knows how long through the middle!! Plus Belgian drivers are terrible. No signals. No lane discipline and absolutely shite at undertaking all the time. As for the Dutch. FFS. Booked in the hotel and had a comfort break and the dinner and a few beers. Very nice. Bed at 2245. posted from Bloggeroid

And away we go. Reggie dropped off at Wyncot nice and early and I filled the tank at Tesco before heading to the Shuttle. The Insignia managed 40.0 mpg on the last tank. With no long journeys and just local driving I had hoped for better. We arrived at 1010 and didn't get an earlier crossing. Our 1120 crossing had been re-timed to 1119!! They might as well have re-timed to 1136 as that's when we wheezed out of Folkestone. Eurotunnel maintains its 100% record of leaving late when I am paying to travel. posted from Bloggeroid

So the BSB tickets have arrived and Neill has his so that he can call in on Friday if he is up there early enough. We are on the 1120 Shuttle from Folkestone and that means we won't hit French soil until 1255 local time.  TomTom calculates that it will take around 6 hours.so we are really looking at arriving at the hotel about 7pm.  So no stop off at Assen on the way past. Tonight I need to pack a bag. I have a series of motorcycle oriented t-shirts ready to pack, plus of course waterproofs. Last weekend in September and Holland/Netherlands can be iffy on the weather front. So we need to pack for all eventualities. Being in the car in pissing rain might be a bonus over the bike, but it is still as wet when you get out..... so brolly? So that's about it until the morning.  Drop off the dog at his holiday suiter and then top the car up with UK diesel and then straight to the Shuttle. And away....

When booking apartments with RCI there is a gamble.  Or it is a gamble.  When you login there might be plenty of choices or there might be few.... either way you have to decide whether to take one that is there, or wait a bit to see if any come online. When I booked Weston a few weeks ago for week 2,  I of course looked at week 1 as well. There were a few resorts in the Orlando/Kissimmee area that were in the yes column, and quite a few in the maybe and a few in the no column. With 23 points left to spend there was plenty of scope but today I logged in and there is a sale on rci.com .  By sale they mean that some resorts are down a few points in price. Although the total number of available resorts hadn't gone up, it had brought some places that were above our points level into play. For it to have evened up a bit, I guess there were resorts we could afford that had been booked and no longer had vacancies. Where we stayed befor...

The trip is getting closer. Hopefully not travelling at a weekend on the Eurotunnel Shuttle  might mean that we don't get the ridiculous delays that I had on Saturday coming back from Belgium on Saturday. Delays in both ways but the return was ridiculous.  Not so much the breakdown but the lack of information and disregard for the paying customers. The bright spot is that the tickets are in the post and should be with us in a few days. I can give Neill his and he can decide what his travel plans are. I expect on his "Ginny" her will make better progress than we will in the car. The Insignia has a range of about 650 miles on a full tank of filthy disgusting child poisoning polluting  (TM anti car groups) diesel so with it topped up before we get on the Shuttle, we should easily make it to the hotel near Assen with plenty to spare.  Depending on the € price per litre I might have to splash and dash instead of a full tank fill-up. The best UK mpg I hav...

With the second week of the trip ending with the Easter holiday; our flight home is Good Friday, everything ramps up price wise and with RCI, points wise also. What might be 13 to 15 RCI points the week before becomes 23 to 25 or more with exchanges starting 13th April. So I have booked the apartment in Weston near Fort Lauderdale for the second week. We have stayed in a different resort there before. Weston isn't on the beach or the Gulf and I find it difficult to see why it was built at all. The centre is laid out in the usual block system but has curved/circular roads..... like a spider web in places.  There's not a lot there but it should be plenty relaxing. Plus of course this is a "short week" for us as we have to leave on the Friday to get to the airport rather than the Saturday. It also means we aren't licke dput at 10am and have 8 hours to find something to do to fill the time. That leaves 23 RCI points to spend on another week elsewhere. ...