That's that then...
Yesterday saw me leave London @ 15:15 in a fully-loaded van heading for the port of Heysham for the (very) early morning boat to the Isle of Man.
The day had been pretty busy loading the van that Ken had driven down from the Isle of Man yesterday & playing cat-and-mouse with the traffic wardens to avoid parking tickets.
I didn't want to get caught by the council on my last day - I've paid them enough money over the years!
Incident & traffic-jam free trip from London (well, no traffic jams after we got past the queues going into Brent Cross!) so we took it easy & drove slowly north stopping a couple of times for refreshments.
We were in no hurry - we had 11 hours to travel about 250 miles and eventually arrived in Heysham @ 23:30 to become the 5th vehicle in the queue to board the boat - which was just arriving as we got there.
However, after sitting in the queue for nearly 2 hours we were the penultimate vehicle to board the boat & had to reverse up the ramp to park on the upper deck (nearly burning the clutch out!).
Once on board, we were informed that the sailing was delayed for approximately an hour due to 'tidal conditions caused by the high pressure over the British Isles'!
Although the boat wasn't very full, we upgraded to 1st class & after a couple of cups of tea Ken went to sleep & I updated my diary before getting a couple of hours sleep.
Arrived in Douglas at 06:45 and after a quick check by security:
Official: "Good morning Sir. Can you tell me what you're carrying?"
Me: "The contents of my flat in London"
Official: "Thank you sir, you may go"
Me: "Thank you - cheers"
Started to unload van as soon as we got home, took a break from about 08:00 - 09:30 then got the heavy stuff off before returning the van.
Whew! Glad that's all over but I now have boxes & sacks everywhere and have to move things around to gain access to cupboards, cooker, garage, utility room etc.
I'm sure it'll get sorted eventually...