Did you know you can follow us on our journey on YouTube!!
Welcome to todays diary entry! Well that was just an absolute disaster! In total has taken about 10 hours to get home although that was a with an hour stop so we didn’t get into Birmingham mid rush hour but if luck is against or you travel at the wrong time then you really are doomed. Let me start at the beginning, the plan originally when we talked about leaving was to set off at about 5am and just blast through and get it done but because we decided to try and get back a bit earlier and come back on the Friday rather than the Saturday we could have the whole weekend to ourselves. Well, that and the shop but at least we could be back home ready for the start of the working week.
The only issue with setting off at 5am is fine as long as you are ready to go, and also up a 5am to leave but because the weather was a million times worse than what we expected i couldn’t take the awning down and have it being absolutely soaking so with the weather looking to clear up later on in the evening i left it up hoping that a couple of hours Thursday night and take it down later would be enough. As you will know it didn’t stop raining so when i woke up at 8am this morning first job was to bash the standing water off the awning and unpeg everything minus the 4 corners. And get packed up ready to leave and by the time we had done that it was gone 10am and because when we arrived on Saturday i didn’t fill up with diesel i had to go to Morrisons anyway to fill up so we were rolling towards home at roughly 10:10.
Last update on 2024-11-14 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
Almost instantly we hit traffic before we got on the main road out of Newquay and Cornwall and a road that should take 90 minutes took 135 minutes and we knew at that point it was going to be bad. We had checked the travel time earlier in the week and it said roughly to Northwich it would take about 5ish hours and we were half way into that but had done less than 20% of the overall trip. I was hoping that once we got on the M5 it would let us a bit but it didn’t, there was traffic at pretty much every junction. The ETA as soon as we had set off was 17:34 but by the time we had gotten to Exeter this had already gone up to 18:44 and was steadily increasing almost every minute.
Despite the Sat Nav saying it was going to clear soon we never really seemed to get out of the traffic and we just seemed to be in a huge rolling block of traffic the only saving grace was that south bound seemed to be just as bad. The salt in the wound was that my sister did set off at 5am and it took them about 4 hours to get home so it just goes to show that dont put something off until tomorrow that you can do today.
Check out these fab resources designed to make your motorhome adventures a breeze ⬇️
- Need a new Motorhome Awning? We’re brand Ambassadors for A&E Leisure. Before we went full time van life, Rich used to work there! He’s now an online Leisure Vehicle Specialist, so if there’s anything you need, he’ll be able to help! [sshh, he also can get you an A&E Leisure Discount code, let’s keep that between us ;)] Just drop us a message on Messenger or Email to get the conversation started.
- Check out our Pre-Departure Motorhome Checklist to make sure things are plain sailing from the off!
- You also have the Mega Motorhome Checklist for everything from the nuts and bolts, kitchen supplies and entertainment.
- Like to document and journal your travels? We have scoured the web for the best Road Trip Journals for Motorhome and Caravan Lovers.
