Bruges Part 2

Well, for those of you that don't like suspense - we made it. And relatively incident free.

My father roused us all at the god-awful hour of before 6am (I say it was awful - it was for everyone except me - one of the few perks of working day shifts, night shifts, early, shifts and really early shifts is that my body clock is well and truly broken, and therefore early starts, no sleep and timezones have no effect on me whatsoever).

We stumbled out to the car (I had already showered, washed my hair and had a bowl of porridge - Lucy looked like a rather unwashed cousin It). And got in the back (with a duvet - best treat ever!). I promptly fell asleep and so missed the drama of moving the car off our street, making it through London, and only woke up when my father's voice and language hit fever pitch.

This was because we were on a motorway (I forget which one) and the car was sliding about, and there was so much snow coming down that looking through the windscreen was like looking at a TV with no reception. And there was a stupid Harvey's furniture van trying to overtake us, but because the snow was so bad, it was impossible to see lane markings, or even the hard-shoulder or central reservation.

We slowed to 20mph, let the stupid Harvey's van speed off and then all took deep breaths. My father then asked my sister (who he had convinced to bring her MacBook) to look up the weather forecast, thus demonstrating naivety on two fronts

a. As Lucy pointed out - It's snowing.
b. Where on earth was she supposed to pick up a Wifi connection (apparently my father, until this moment was unaware that a MacBook, or indeed any laptop needed such a thing to connect to the internet).

Anyway. Once we were back on track, we actually made it to the tunnel in pretty good time. So good in fact that we were able to get on an earlier tunnel being one of just 4 cars that had turned up.

Obviously I slept on the tunnel journey (surprisingly short - only 40mins) and once we were off the other side the roads were fine, the snow minimal, and Bruges a mere hours drive. The gamble had indeed paid off.