Foreign Perspectives

One of the problems when you’ve not been exercising for a while (or never got around to starting) is that first time into the gym.

Trivial though it’ll seem when you look back on it months later but not to be underestimated at the time is the sheer intimidation factor. There’s you just getting going on your exercise programme and you’re surrounded by all these athletes and feeling seriously out of place.

One way to get around that initial out of place feeling is to forget about the gym treadmills and get your very own one. Not a cheap option to be sure but then neither is a health club subscription and there’s the plus point that all the family can use it too. However, to my mind the biggest plus is that it gives you the opportunity to get yourself going along that road to a fitter you without the embarassment factor that you’re likely to get in going from cold into a gym environment.

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What’s turned out to be the greatest advantage in our move this time around has been that we have a courtyard and could therefore spread the packing in over several days.

That simple change has meant that we’ve been able to take a great deal more than we originally thought would have been possible. Instead of the rushed packing last time around, we were able to create a very full 3D jigsaw puzzle within the trailer with just about every piece of space occupied by something or other and we’ve even managed to get so far into the original “would like to take but probably can’t” pile that we had to add some more things to it.

One thing that we did watch this time around was that we didn’t overload the trailer which we was helped along considerably by leaving the various toys in the boxes and which filled up the trailer quite nicely with relatively light boxes for the most part. That’s not to say that there aren’t one or two boxes that we can barely lift though!

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Whilst it might seem obvious that the most expensive ferry is definitely the dearest option, in our case it turns out that the most expensive ferry route forms part of the cheapest and quickest route for us.

Ordinarily we’d have driven from here to Calais, took the ferry to Dover, drove up England then over Scotland and finally took the ferry from Stranraer to Larne. Considering just the non-France bit that’s £60 for the Dover ferry, probably £50 for petrol, another £50 for a hotel (possibly two) and £170 for the Larne ferry ie around £330 or perhaps £380.

However, the Le Havre to Rosslare ferry costs £250 and effectively includes that hotel as it’s an overnight trip. Thus whilst we’d have been driving up England instead we’ll be on the ferry and leaving two days later will arrive just one day later and a good deal more rested too.

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