Before sundown ....

..... somewhere in the middle of France.

I was in possession of who was quite possibly, the most exhausted person I'd ever seen ~ my Dan ~ wh0'd valiantly travelled to the UK and driven back to Chamonix in 24 hours; the final Cheeques disaster insult, in pursuit of getting all of our worldly belongings back onto home soil.

As he twitched in and out of a shaking disorientated sleep, I took over the shift + sped the hummer rental vehicle across the vast open country, with shear dramatic shadows bellowing across the endless fields. As the early hours crept in and my eyes starting wincing with every perfect road marking that was monotonously sliding beneath us as repetitively as the last, it was time to make regular coffee stops at the sporadic creepy mid country gas stations. I could double up my shots for an extra thirty cents, which I thought it would be rude not to indulge in. I played trippy music that didn't seem to disturb my slumbering hero in hope that it would keep me alert enough for us to reach the coast. The last time we were chugging along the wide open French freeways we were so recklessly fuelled by the infinite possibilities that we were so sure lay directly ahead of us; so it all of a sudden felt a little sad when dabbling with the lonely realisation that our Gigantic Pedal Powered Paint Fuelled Winter In The Deep Southern Villages Of Europe had been a complete fail.

More to the point though, signposts for Calais were now in sight and we were about to go home. It was around this point that I realised my jaw had been grinding in on itself for quite some time, in some pepped up confusing condition of over caffeine'd elation.

At four thirty am, we saw the sea + climbed aboard a big boat that would narrow the gap between Blighty and us by approximately thirty miles.