nickwilkes.co.uk

From 16th to 18th November Adam, Hayley, Matthew and I decided to take a weekend away on a booze cruise to Calais.

It has by far been the best weekend of the year for me, from comments like;
“Is that the sky” (Adam) – With boats in the middle of them!
to
“I can see the clouds” (Me) – First thing I saw after coming off the ferry – It was the lovely White Cliffs of Dover!
to
“this is ‘like’ a litre of beer” (Matt) – With a litre of beer in a huge glass in his hand!

Friday:
Set off around 9.30am after spending what felt like 20 minutes setting up the awful Sony Navigation unit (thanks Matt!), and it took around 4 hours to get to Folkestone where our hotel for the weekend was based. Settled in and had a walk around the town. What a funny little place it is, we could only find one pub, which was by mistake (Wetherspoons of all places!). Had a few drinks in there then decided to go for a buffet…
What a mistake that was, it was a mixed Asian buffet that happened to be cold. After some minutes of scoffing ourselves Matt thankfully had the guts to complain. They realised they had turned one of the heaters off… Great, so based on what happened next I am guessing they poorly reheated everything as I had the worst diarrhoea ever!
Matt and I kept challenging one another by trying to pick things up with chop sticks, of which I was better than him at but try telling him that! Ice-cream is easy – try picking jelly up! Decided to go back to ‘Spoons and drink the night away, even though we had to be up for about 4.30am!

Saturday:
Woke up around 4.30am to catch the ferry for 6. It was a really tiring morning and I really didn’t feel too good, this was first expressed at the port with severe belching, to the point it was making me feel sick, let along poor Adam and Matt who were heaving. Decided to try and settle our stomachs by having a good ol’ greasy full English breakfast and it really didn’t go down too well for me. Everywhere I seemed to go, everyone else didn’t want to be there! Wind was coming out of all orifices!
We arrived in France around 9am and decided to go straight to Eastenders then Cite Europe, how hard could it be, we had an experienced France driver (me) and supposedly a good navigator (Adam)! Within 15 minutes I happen to turn down a road and see one lane of traffic, of which was facing me… Doh, slap it in reverse and get out of here… pretending nothing had happened! Another 10 minutes down the road I was informed we had to “go that way”, “what way?”, “that way”, “what do you mean that way, which way is that way?”, “that way”… it was hard work! To the point we ended up boarding the EuroStar! – Well almost, it was a point of no return and we had to embarrassingly inform the desk operator we had taken a wrong turn so she handed us a memorable exit pass!
Cite Europe; Within seconds of getting there I was on the toilet… for ages, the diarrhea had started! From here on the weekend was not entirely enjoyable for myself, but it happened to amuse the others.
We went for a drink in a restaurant near the Carrefour and Matt had a litre of beer, strange that Matt, “this is like a litre of beer” – no shit!
Carried on shopping for some hours before deciding to go for a little drive, how we didn’t get lost I have no idea!
Boarded the ferry about an hour earlier than planned and arrived in Dover about 9pm. We had planned on going to the chippy but I was feeling really rough so went straight to bed. The others had the best chips they had had in ages, and didn’t they rub it in!

Sunday:
Waking up around 4am with the peak of the diarrhoea I was still on the toilet to see sunrise at around 6.30am and after some 15 visits or more to the toilet and quickly running out of toilet roll this was no longer funny for me. By around 9am my stomach was somewhat relieved yet still not right. We were hoping to go shopping, but I was unsure if I was going to be able to make 10 minutes down the motorway without damaging Adam’s seats let alone taking a detour and spend some time shopping. Having held my butt cheeks together for a couple of hours we stopped in Oxford and spent about 2 hours shopping, what little bit we saw, it seems to be a really beautiful city (but a word of warning, use the park and ride!).
Managed to hold everything in until I got home, but as soon as I did, my god! Got home around 5pm and decided to relax in a warm bubbly bath, what a relief it was!

Many thanks to Adam, Hayley and Matt for a fantastic weekend, I am sorry about my burps and farting… they were uncontrollable!

I really look forward to Booze Cruise 2008 with the addition of Dan all being well.