Portsmouth
If you look at the map overleaf, one of the lines emanating from the port goes to Le Havre. That’s where we’re headed.
Xin Hui is blogging at the next terminal so she’ll have her own take on the day. I’m just really happy and relieved to be here. Despite our inauspicious start, we got rides in pretty decent succession. Ride 2 was a young cockney who was off for a weekend in Farnham. I think it was to play football. He took us a few miles down the A3, through Guildford, where he dropped us off at another service station.
There, we got picked up after about 30 minutes by an English Orthodox priest who had stopped to fill his car with petrol. He was a very cheerful chap, and he happily expounded about his church, his wife and five kids, and answered all my questions about his religion. His explanation of the difference between his church and the Catholic and Protestant churches was pretty good. He dropped us off about eight miles from Portsmouth, at Waterlooville, where an older man picked us up. He was off to Portsmouth to visit his sister. He rented out a few rooms in his house, and it allowed him to go live in Pattaya, Thailand, for three to six months every year. He declared, “Portsmouth is a DUMP” with great emphasis, and from what I saw as he drove us through, he was right.
Off to Le Havre on the overnight ferry. Next stop, France!