Thursday 17th June – The original plan was to travel from Bury St Edmunds to Portsmouth on the Thursday, but the exertions of the previous day proved too much and we decided to change our ferry booking from Portsmouth so that we could travel down on Friday morning. We were heading to Portsmouth, and then France to attend Deb and Loic wedding in Normandy on the Saturday.

Friday 18th June – We set off in the van down to Portsmouth in order to get the P&O ferry to Caen. The journey down went very smoothly and a safe parking place was found for the van.

The crossing was fine, nothing like the ones Vic had previously experienced. We called the solicitors who confirmed that we had successfully completed the sale of our flat. An hour or so later we received a call from the estate agents to tell us the same things. That was pretty much the first time they had called us in 2 months. Half an hour later they rang again.

“This is going to sound terribly unprofessional, but we seem to have mislaid the keys to your flat, would you have a spare set you could pop over to us?”

Vic replied, “Yes, that is terribly unprofessional, and I’m afraid we can’t drop in a spare set of keys as we’re in the middle of the English Channel on the way to France”.

They then blustered that they thought they knew where the keys were and were sorry to have bothered us. For over £6,000 (their fee), you would think they’d be able to manage the basics…

On arrival in Caen we caught a bus and then a train to Carentan where a taxi met us. Arriving at the chalets we were greeted by Deb, her sisters and a couple of friends who were working on last minute preparations (like seating plans, menus etc). We were all pretty tired by that point so retired to bed early, if you call 11pm early.