The Santander ferry crossing

Saturday night was concluded with a lovely dinner in a cosy carvery in Cardiff in Wales. We had a great time with Mark and Paula, previously from our Ireland church family who now live in Wales. As an added bonus we were joined by Paul and Caroline visiting them from Dublin. What a lovely way to close out our first day on the road.

We turned in around 22:00 and slept like logs as soon as our heads hit the pillows. We woke around 08:00 well before the alarms went off, had a warm shower and went for a hearty English breakfast, packed the bikes again and burned down the last for hours down to Plymouth port to the overnight ferry crossing to Santander in Spain.

We arrived in time as they started boarding, driving down the ramps into the huge belly of the ferry where the bikes are strapped down for the 18 hour journey. We were met by a stewardess handing us our boarding cards with cabin numbers and keycards and instructions how to get to the right deck. In typical sailor fashion the compartment covered the bare essentials with bunk beds and a claustrophobic ensuite shower unit, but served it's purpose. We could position ourselves horizontally and recharge for the next day.

We explored all 8 decks and my concept of ferries was altered dramatically. Growing up in South Africa when I read about a ferry, I always visualised this chap pulling a platform on a couple of forty four gallon drums on a rope across a river. This ferry is more like a luxury cruiser, with shops, dining room and luxury lounges, a cinema, swimming pools and bars and even a lounge with a piano player.

We had a steak dinner and turned in early to get up for 05:30 to catch the sunrise over the ocean.

At 06:00 we jumped out of bed, grabbed the cameras and ran out to deck to be greeted by a cloudcovered gray morning to our disappointment. We were looking forward to some sunny Spanish weather after the last two miserably drizzly gray days on the windy motorways. The outside deck was surprisingly warm thou in spite of the cloud cover.

We settled for a lousy bitter cup of vending machine coffee waiting for the restaurant to open for breakfast.

It's now ninety minutes before docking. Time for a shower, packing the overnight bags and getting ready to put our feet down on Spanish soil, find a campsite and figure our what's we'll do with the day ahead.