Thursday 28 July 2011

Home again!

Did I ever tell you I hate traveling on a coach? When I'm not driving that is? Well, I do. Just so you know!

The floor in the bus!
Yesterday morning I was in the first of four groups to pick up the Dutch scout troops to take to Sweden. I left on time at 08.30am and arrived at the World Jamboree at 12.15pm. Everything was so well coordinated we only had to wait for two minutes before I was able to drop them off. They left my coach in a right state, but with all the rain and muck and mud of the past week, I was prepared. And since I was in the first group, I had a lot of time before the last ones would be there to actually clean the coach. At least brush the dirt out and make it look presentable again.

The toll bridge from Sweden to Denmark
We then had to wait for all the coaches to arrive, which took about four hours and finally at a quarter past four, all the drivers (bar two who were staying behind to look after the coaches) piled on one coach and left for the Netherlands. We passed through Sweden at a good pace, seeing coach after coach filled with scouts from all over the world. We then had to cross the toll bridge and tunnel to Denmark and came back to familiar territory again.

There was a train on the ferry!
We kept driving through Denmark until we reached the ferryport of Rodby (with the diagonal line again). We knew we were late for our ferry (it had left twenty minutes earlier), but managed to catch the next one, so we only lost half an hour. From Puttgarden (the German side of the ferry), we drove towards Hamburg, which I completely missed, since I slept my way to Bremen. We had a short stop to switch drivers and then drove on towards home. Our pick-up driver had to wake up extra early, because according to the planners we were about 2-3 hours early! We just thought there was no point hanging around for nothing!

I made it home at five in the morning and was in bed half an hour later. My own bed...

4 comments:

  1. I had to review my geography to picture the bridge. Somehow, I had never realized just how close Sweden and Denmark were. I thought there was a winder gap between the tow.

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  2. im a little,no,a lot confused on how or why a train was on the ferry?
    is it always your job to clean your bus or is there a business that comes out to clean them every now and then on the inside? and what about the outside?

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  3. I have to read this later, not enough time for comments, sorry !

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  4. I'm glad you home and in your own bed. What a great adventure you were on. What a beautiful bridge.

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Any weighty (and not so weighty) comments are welcome!