MOVING/ ROADTRIP to a new COUNTRY 🧳 📦 🚗 Part 1 from 11~ THE FERRY CROSSING ⛴️ 🌊

Hi all 👋🏻

Today I want to share with you PART 1 from 11
Yes… there will be 11 parts to get there 😇 (if I don’t squeeze another step in somewhere… but I will tell you)
To where? you must think…
I’m not telling yet 🫣

These parts will be about our move to a new COUNTRY 😊 some parts will include some subtle hints, via text or photo 😅😉 so pay attention!

In our first stay and on the Ferry ⛴️ sailing across the English Channel… I didn’t have any Wi-Fi, luckily I have now a good connection and can upload all the photos I took along the road. 📸

If you missed the update. I am moving to a new country (again) via a longgggg road trip 🚗🚗🚗🚗 from almost 1 MONTH! 😉😎

Are you ready to come along and find out everything from this exciting and epic adventure?
YES, AWESOME!

Today’s selection will be of 72 photographs.
Date: 27 and 28 January 2024
The Photographs in this post are all taken with my iPhone by me 📱🤓 and a few by hubby… when I was driving 🚗 we do share each journey/ part, as the trip is toooo long for just one person to drive 😁

If you missed the post from the movers and all the boxes 4 days ago… have a look : 📦🚛 GUESS WHAT??? 🫣 I am moving to a new country 🧳 📦 …AGAIN!!!

LETS START NOW!

I loaded our car up in the morning last Saturday.
I had to squeeze in a lot of boxes, bags and suitcases… included some fragile paintings and Starlink 📡
Things we would need the coming weeks and first weeks in the new place… as our belongings will only be arriving between 3 and 6 weeks 🚛🚛🚛🚛 (hopefully)

The car was full… let me tell you… hahaha 🤣 all the way to the roof and against the front seats. The back seats all the way down.

To know how many kilometres we will drive in total. I decided to take a photo from the dashboard every part of the journey.
We start at : 126.392 km

I haven’t found a real travel map 🗺️ yet @steven-patrick but this will do for now.

We start on the west coast of #IRELAND 🇮🇪 COUNTY MAYO and drive down south to the FERRY HARBOUR of ROSSLARE ⛴️ where we will sail at 22:01h in the evening.

We started driving around 1400h
Seeing the Irish country side go by.

As we drive south we do take also main roads. Yes we drive on the left in Ireland 🇮🇪

I still haven’t got used to this… hahaha 🤣

Between Kilbeggan and Tullamore along the N52 we find 4 large statues…
It almost looks like they are wishing us well and safe journey 🚗😊

They are large, hubby tried to capture them all but managed only 3 of them.

They are beautiful 🤩

In Tullamore we change drivers, have a break… some cappuccino’s ☕️☕️🍰🧁 and cakes. From now onwards I can take photos as I won’t be driving the last part 😎
I can’t drive longer than 2 hours in a day and 4 hours is about the longest for me in a car. So we are limited a bit… by this.

Hubby is driving now and we will take more motorways now. I don’t like them and will drive the inland routes most of the time…. As the back roads are so much more fun hahaha 😂

We pass by lots of ruins and castles 🏰 it’s about 17:12h here. The sun is going down slowly. We do have lots of rain along the road too 🌧️

Favourite photo of the day… ok one of them 😉
It’s hard to get a photo in the dark with the phone, driving… rainy…

First sign of ROSSLARE HARBOUR ⛴️

We reached it at 20:20h if you want to know… we did go for dinner too before we headed to the harbour.

We go straight to check in… the ferry is BRITTANY FERRIES ⛴️

We wait in the line before we can go further. 20:27h

We don’t have to wait long as we are waved through at 20:45h, and start driving towards the ferry ⛴️
Still raining 🌧️ so the photos aren’t that clear.

We go to the left ferry… first photo / thumbnail is also from around this moment….

And hop, we drive onto the ferry ⛴️

In between all the large trucks.

We drive close in the lane to the other cars.

And park the car, switch off the alarm 🚨 otherwise it will go off during the crossing due to the vibrations of the ship.

We go to our cabin and start exploring the area we can walk around. We are outside on the back deck.

Looking up behind me… we can go there too, but not further. It’s not a large ferry ⛴️ and other places are not accessible for us.
OR LET ME SAY… IT IS MAINLY A FREIGHT FERRY. SO ABOUT 95% OF THE PASSENGERS WERE TRUCK DRIVERS.
Only about 35 normal cars, everything else were trucks with trailers.

The other favourite photo of mine… the life boat.

We see also this sign for whale 🐳 and dolphin 🐬 watching :

Here you also can see the ROUTE the FERRY will take.
ROSSLARE TO CHERBOURG FRANCE… follow the line 🗺️😎
The crossing will be 17 hours! 😳😬
Believe me it was longgggggggg

2 minutes before we leave… men come to release the ropes.

He is taking it off 😎

And we are loose! Yeah 👍🏻

Right on time to start our long sail ⛴️⛴️⛴️⛴️ 22:01h

👋🏻 BYE BYE IRELAND 🇮🇪 (for now… will be back in a few months… I tell you closer to the time why)

We go inside and have a hot chocolate ☕️ and tea…
Soon after we go to the cabin.

Let me tell you… it was a very choppy trip on this ferry. Strong winds, still after the storms from the days before. 🌊🌊🌧️🌧️🌬️🌬️
We hardly slept. We were thrown in every direction in our bunk beds hahaha 🤪

In the morning it was a bit less choppy 🌊🌊🌊and we managed to go out on deck.
Now we can see so much more too.

Let’s look around on the back deck.

Some trucks are outside on both sides…

The life boat.

The sign and entrance towards one of the decks.

Still choppy, but way less and I don’t have to hold myself at the moment.

The other side with more trucks.

I see… YES WE SEE LAND
It’s around 14:23h the next day. Sunday 28 January.
We reached the waters at FRANCE 🇫🇷 👋🏻🌊⛴️

We sail very slow now….
An hour later at 15:17h we get company.
That little boat 🛥️ guides the ferry towards the CHERBOURG harbour 🇫🇷

So cool to see 😎

The little boat goes past now and soon I can not see it anymore.

We pass by some awesome structures in the harbour on the right…

People are getting ready…

Another cool structure on the other side of the harbour with lighthouse 😎

We are entering the port section… so much to see.

Truck drivers can’t wait to get off, looking out…

We are still moving. ⛴️🌊

And we have docked (not on this side)… the sand on the bottom is being stirred up.

On this side we are docking.

We have to get to the cabin to take our belongings and go to the car… we are walking down the stairs from deck 8 all the way to deck 3… and get into the car.

We drive off the ferry ⛴️ at 16:11h
FINALLY… WE ARE BACK ON MAINLAND EUROPE…
It is sooooo good to feel land beneath our feet 🦶🏻 😉😁

Bonjour La belle France 🇫🇷

We follow the trucks out of the harbour.

The direction we are heading 😊 🚗🚗 vroom vroom…

Yep… our steering wheel is now on the wrong side 😳 driving on the right side of the road.
Will be interesting when I have to drive the next day…

Quick capture of the km odometer/ dashboard.
126.732 km.

We know straight away we are in FRANCE 🇫🇷
You just notice it on so many things.

Our last journey of this part. We drive from Cherbourg to Saint Hymer for our accommodation.

Some beautiful signs along our route… telling the major sight seeing sights 🤓

Our direction 🚗🚗🚗😊

Going through valleys and over some good roads.

As we are driving through Normandy we see many of these signs.

Going on this large bridge… the sun is setting on the right 🌅🌇

I turn slowly and capture it. 🥰

Beautiful colours 😊

What a beautiful arrival on France 🇫🇷

We drive through some small villages. I like the building of the post office 🤓

I get the feeling I almost could have said hi to my friend @anttn 👋🏻

We drive further… not far now anymore 🚗

It is getting dark quickly now, we see some flooding along the way.

We reached our accommodation.
I share in the next part.
But for now… let’s look at how far we have driven in part one.

126.899 km

Means we have driven in 2 days 507 km along the road🚗… and covered 17 hours on the ferry ⛴️ what is about 633 km

So first total : 1,140 km

Hope you enjoyed coming along and are curious to see what will happen in part 2 😁

Talk soon… 👋🏻🇫🇷😊 if I can upload photos. I will do my best.

Now I say; that’s all for today’s post my friends.
Join me next time for more #updates, #adventures, #stories and #photographs 😎👋🏻
Even my own #artworks, once in a while, will come by” 🎨
Thank you so much for looking, and reading.

#ecency banner by @irisworld

Any questions or comments, let me know. Always happy to help.

Have a great day all 😎
Grtz Jackie

Unless stated otherwise: All art and photos used in my posts are taken, created and owned by me. If you wish to use any of my photographs, please contact me first. As I have used some commercially myself. We don’t want that you or somebody else gets into trouble 😉 So please don’t use them without my consent.

🖼 My PRINTSHOP: for the purchase of all kind of prints in many sizes from my Artworks 🎨 and Photography 📸 Which come on different objects too. Have a look in My Prints Shop!

If you want to see where I traveled to and what I already shared in @pinmapple, have a look at my personal map here: Littlebee4 PINMAPPLE MAP

#ecency image by @irisworld