Wanderlust: The Departure

Our destination was Greece. White sand, blue sea, sun, whitewashed buildings with blue roofs. It’s what everyone thought Greece was like. So the plan was to get there as quickly as possible. Days were spent perusing maps of Europe to work out the best route. Hitch to Dover, ferry over to Oostende then the autobahn down the west of Germany, through Austria, Yugoslavia (as it was then) and into Greece.

We set off on a Thursday – no particular reason why we chose that day, and it was raining. August in England and raining! We almost changed our minds then, but eventually a beak in the weather came and we walked the couple of miles to the nearest M1 junction and the journey began.

All went well, we got lifts down to London, stopping at several of the service stations along the motorway where we could find a lift with a lorry driver and arrived, wet and cold, at Dover around 4 am in time for the 6:30 am ferry over to Oostende. Exhausted we settled down in the waiting room for a catnap.

At 10:15 am we were once again on dry land. Continental land. At first sight Oostende didn’t look much different to England, but at least it wasn’t raining. We quickly found the Tourist Information Office (the first building we sought out everywhere we went – second was a bank to change up our traveller’s cheques) and got directions to a nearby campsite where we would stay for a couple of nights. Catching the bus to the campsite we were fairly giddy with excitement.

Putting up the tent proved more difficult than we imagined (we had trialled it in England, using it at the Reading Festival a few weeks earlier) due to a blustery wind that had arisen from nowhere. As luck would have it a couple of English lads noticed our predicament and came to help. On condition we went for a drink with them afterwards. Cathy and I exchanged glances, it was going to be like that was it.

Tent up, we crawled into our sleeping bags and slept for a few hours, before joining the lads in the campsite bar for pints of Belgium beer. It turned out they were northerners too – George from Edale near Sheffield and Dave from Manchester. They were on their way home after a couple of weeks in the Netherlands. The campsite was close to the beach and later we watched as fireworks lit the sky. I was quite relieved that the boys were leaving the next day.