24th July 2018 - The ferry from Portsmouth to Santander

Kms today = 426
Kms to date = 3,665

We were up at 6:30am, the early sunrise gets us every time.
Judy made a great breakfast and we were on our way and heading for BMW in Chester by 8:30am. They had the part .... £36!!! for a piece of plastic with an LED!!! Colin and I tried to fit it but we didn't have the tools so one of their mechanics took pity on us and did the job in 2 minutes. We were on our way by 9:30am heading to Portsmouth to catch the ferry to Santander. Colin had planned some backroads so he lead. We must have hit every roadworks in England so it was quite slow in places. Luckily I received a text saying the boat was an hour late which gave us more time to get there. We made it by 4pm and were on board by 5pm.

Here we are jammed up the pointy end of the boat.

Who's this good looking bloke with a gut???

Our  cabin wasn't ready so we had to wait 30 minutes to get in and again get our sweaty riding gear off. As soon as we were installed we headed for the bar for a couple of well earned cold beers. As usual you couldn't swing a cat in the cabin but it served its purpose.We had dinner in the canteen style restaurant with the rest of passengers. There was a bit of a queue when we arrived but not too bad. After we finished the queue was all the way back to Portsmouth and we were passing the Isle of Wight by then!!!
The food was passable; I had pumpkin soup and lamb curry.

Pumpkin soup and lamb curry!!

After dinner we went to a movie Oceans 8. Light entertainment.
We finished the night with a nightcap and a couple of games of gin rummy. Cumulative score is Colin 2 Alan 1. Early days.