So close and yet so far

We've explored all the public areas on the ferry on our crossing between UK and Spain, so we had about 18 hour to pass between getting on board and sleeping as much as we could. We watched a movie, reflected on our experiences, and over analysed cultural differences, annoyances and things and family we started missing.

Disembarking from the ferry went as planned, I was blowing like an ox running the bike up the ramp, but it went smooth without problems, even clearing border control went without a glitch, passport stamped without delays.

We had to wait till all the other vehicles cleared before we could push the bike through a side gate, unload the luggage, grabbing the Varadero on the forks and handlebars on both sides trying to lift in onto the transit van. It was quickly apparent that we overestimated our own strength or underestimated the weight of the Varadero.

We started routing around and Pat followed a security official to the dockers yard to try and find a plank that can serve as a ramp. That went much easier and at around 20:30 we finally had the bikes strapped down and finding a service station to refuel the Transit van. By the time we were on the road it was dark and the GPS indicated we would be in Taunton just after 23:00.

After finding some food late at night we literally fell into bed just before midnight, set the alarm again for 08:00, chucked our bags back in the van, had our breakfasts and made our way to Fishgaurd for the final water crossing at 18:00. We arrived just after 14:10, minutes to late to make it onto the earlier Ferry for the 14:30 departure.

The next blow is the news that the 18:00 departure is cancelled and that we have to wait for the 02:45 sailing.

Is there really more that can go wrong? So close and yet so far. The difference between pinning out a route out on a map on the wall and actually executing on it is so much different. It just occurred to me thou, back when we did our first trip on our 50cc's, I drove on a dirt road till the back tire was in bits and a friend went ahead phoned my dad from the next town and dad bailed me out arriving with his truck and not saying much at all. I actually blocked the negatives from that adventure.

In the meantime, twelve more hour waiting ahead for us, too short really to justify the expense of yet another unplanned hotel and getting there well in advance to offload bikes, loading luggage and rolling bikes on ferry again.

Trying to pass another 12 hours, not really tired enough to sleep, only 2.5 hours possible sleep during the crossing and 2 hours more to cover the distance to Dublin at 06:30 in the morning with almost no sleep.

We drove 25km from Fishgaurd to a tiny little Welsh village, Cardigan, looking really suspicious, two grown men with foreign accents in a rental van, staking out the local theater/cinema, waiting for the only adult movie to start at 20:40. We're almost there, only one more hour to go.