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Zeebrugge - Edinburgh
E.Route : Zeebrugge-Edinburgh : Dist. 500+ m.
A.Route : Zeebrugge-Edinburgh : Dist. 500+ m.
- Depart Zeebrugge by ferry
- Arrive Dover
- Clear customs
- Bacon sandwich stop (Berwick)
- Arrive Edinburgh
Jim Lindsay's diary:
8 October
Embarrassingly, when daylight came we turned out to have camped blocking the entrance
of a caravan hire yard. Luckily there was not much to pack up and we were ready to go
by the time the proprietor turned up. After that it was just a matter of waiting for
the ferry.
It was a fairly rough crossing and there were schoolchildren leaning over the side
being sick into the wind. In the sheltered lounge deck people were moaning about the
lack of public toilets in Le Touquet and I could not help feeling a little superior.
Greg had planned a ceremonial exit from the ferry with Durham setting a symbolic first
set of wheels on English tarmac. There had been a major balls-up in packing us into
the vehicle deck, though, and when the time came it was Cuddles and her crew who came
off first.
We swept past a few waiting parents and the like and straight into a customs shed,
where they did a long and rigorous search of all the communal property, even opening
the matchboxes one by one, but they never touched the personal property. If R had
gambled on them using this strategy, he had been successful, and he gloated later
about how he had brought in enough to pay for the cost of the journey. A pity that
this ingenuity could not have been put to more helpful uses.
9 October
Various people had left us in London or beyond so it was a very depleted Cuddles that
stopped in Berwick early the following morning for bacon sandwiches in a friendly
cafe, and eventually came to a halt in Warrender Park Road, where we were met by what
seemed to be a very small group of local press, friends, and relatives.
It was a bit of a whimper to finish with. We all dispersed and had other things to do.
As far as I was concerned I was already late for my first term as a research student
and had to be down at High School Yards the next day to get a new experience started.
Homecoming by Liz Y
At the end of our expedition, the first to bid farewell to the contingent was Johan.
Cuddles dropped him off at a mainline station in Brussels to begin the long train
journey across France to his parents' home in Northern Spain. I think I was the
second to leave, possibly followed soon after by Liz B who had a job to start in
the south of England and later by Joanna whose family home was in Leeds. At Dover
I transferred to the Bristol coach to take a detour to the West Country to visit
my paternal grandparents before returning to Scotland later by train.
The Bristol coach headed first to London where one of that contingent was to be
dropped off home. It was already dark when we arrived at his parents' address, a
large Edwardian house in the west of the city. We were all made welcome and offered
individual tubs of luxury ice cream, gratefully consumed and dubbed "posh ice cream",
the sort that students couldn't normally afford.
It was getting late when the contingent
resumed the final leg of its journey back to Bristol. During the next couple of hours
the coach stopped once for a bog stop in a suburban front garden. Old habits die hard!
About 2.30 a.m. the coach reached the outskirts of Bristol and dropped me at the gates
of my grandparents' home. I hadn't announced exactly when I would be arriving and the
house was in darkness.
I tried not to clink the wrought iron gates or crunch on the
gravel path round to the back of the house. The doors were locked and I didn't want
to wake my elderly grandparents. I managed to get into a small porch/conservatory
abutting the kitchen door. There was just enough room to roll out my sleeping bag on
the uneven flagstone floor between shelves of cacti and other potted plants. In this
way I managed to sleep for a few hours.
It was the first time for several months that
I had been completely alone and the first time I had ever spent a night by myself more
or less outdoors. The strange thing is that after Comex I felt no sense of fear. This
all seems rather foolhardy now. The garden was surrounded by a fairly high wall, but
there was a field to the left and more open space to the rear. It was very quiet and
completely dark.
At 6 a.m. I heard my grandmother come downstairs to make tea and startled
her by appearing at the kitchen window. Thereafter the story was told and retold about my
unexpected arrival from India and overnight stay in this confined space outside the back door.
| Memorabilia Corner Postscript from Prince Philip | |
| Clip from "The Times" | |
| Clip from "Student" by Bob Dixon |
