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The peak of the swell was forecasted for Sunday with 7ft @ 17 seconds. Saturday afternoon the first waves were supposed to reach Cornish shores with 2ft @ 20 seconds. I booked the last ferry on Friday night to leave me enough time to make the 800 km drive to Calais, a route which always has a few traffic jams and therefor makes it difficult to calculate the travel time. With a bit of luck I would reach the beach late Saturday afternoon and get a first session
Thursday night I started the van. I made it to Amsterdam the same night and was lucky the next day with not getting into any serious traffic jams. At Antwerp I started to recalculate my time schedule. I judged that I would reach Calais about 3 hours before my booked ferry departure. What should I do? Take a sleep for 3 hours and then continue with a night drive to pass at least London and avoid morning business traffic? Finally I reached Calais early enough to fill up my food supplies and still reach the Harbour in time for the 20:00 ferry. I decided to give it a try and drove straight to the check in counter. There a nice French lady changed my booking on the earlier ferry without letting my pay an extra fee. My chances for a surf session the next day grew immensely. Just when I passed the border control it got a bit critical again. My passport was expired and I had to walk into the customs office. But after a few minutes of waiting, a friendly police officer came over and to my great relieve told me that I could pass. YES! Didn´t have to switch to a plan B. So I made it past London the same night and went to sleep at a highway services place near Andover. After a few hours of sleep I got up before dawn and continued driving on the still empty A 303. It was very foggy and near Stonehenge the first faint sunrays started a fight with the fog. I decided to stop and give respect to the ancient gods just to make sure that the wind would stay offshore.
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