Although I managed to sleep through my 5.15am alarm (I blame it on the high quality of the local beer served at the Drum Inn!), I was very thankful for the back-up of a second alarm call in the form of my friend Ollie banging on the window of my camper at 5.30am to wake me up so that we could get to the Euro Tunnel for our 6.00am booking! It was a case of quickly putting some clothes on, throwing some water on my face and a short drive down to junction 11A of the M20 to the EuroTunnel and get our VW buses loaded upon Le Shuttle – Ninove, here we come!
With our overnight stay at the Drum Inn being so close, we easily made it to the Euro Tunnel with time to spare and within no time at all, we were both aboard Le Shuttle with our Split screen campers safely parked inside the train. The journey is surprisingly quick (approx. 30 minutes) which I guess is not that surprising as the train travels at 140 km/h (nearly 90mph), but it gave us time to stretch our legs and grab some munchies for breakfast.
Once we had disembarked on the French side of the EuroTunnel in Calais, we traveled a short distance on the A16/E40 to the Bonjour services and met up with some of the other people and their vintage VW’s and Porsches who were gathering for the UK cruise to Ninove. It soon became apparent that this was going to be quite some cruise as the number of different vintage vehicles began to take over the service station forecourt!
We waited here for an hour to allow people catching later bookings on the EuroTunnel to arrive, plus other people from France to arrive and become part of the cruise to Ninove. This provided good trade for the service stain with people filling up their tanks and taking the opportunity to grab some breakfast from the service station cafe, coffee and croissant, how very continental!
Then once everyone had arrived, some pictures had been taken, it was time to hit the road and head off to the Witkap Brewery in Ninove. I thought I would take the opportunity to capture the cruise to Ninove via a short time-lapse movie, hope you enjoy watch it…
