"I spent a month in Southampton one week. . ."

Connie came to the conclusion that many of the homeless people on the streets of Southampton, England were in fact travelers who had come to collect a shipment from overseas and have been waiting, in some cases for decades, for the well-oiled machinery of customs to perform its machinations. After our third day wandering the streets in the same clothes, we too began to feel and smell like these wayward drifters in search of their long lost possessions. After waiting out Monday and Tuesday, hoping for things to happen naturally, we took matters into our own hands on Wednesday and delivered each bit of paper in person to its appropriate recipient. This cost a packet in cab fare, but did seem to move the process along a bit. By Thursday afternoon we were finally told that our container was ready to be unpacked. We ran (almost literally) to the location our container had been dropped, and discovered our vehicles upright and still in one piece!

With great excitement we re-connected the batteries, started them up and drove them out of the container. We immediately hit the road and made the four-hour drive to Ludlow, where we are the guests of Liz and Tony Jackson, Graham's parents. We will be spending the next few days tracking down some last minute parts required for the vehicles and making final preparations.

We hope to begin our journey south toward the dark continent by the end of next week. After 2 weeks of typical British mid-winter rain and overcast skies, we are looking forward to some Moroccan sun!

We have finally embarked on our journey toward Africa. What's done on the vehicles is done, and what's not done doesn't need to be done. We departed Graham's parents' home in Downton at 2pm to make the four hour drive to Portsmouth to catch our ferry to France. It was an uneventful trip through the English country-side, culminating at the ferry port and dinner at a pub. We drove onto the ferry at 10:00pm and stayed awake long enough to watch England disappear in our wake. Then to bed for some much needed sleep, after a long day of packing and loading.