Friday 19th November 1999

George: "Catching the 9am train from Norwich to London would have been simple if it had not been for an impromptu pub crawl the day before. At this point I was gratefully happy that I get very ill when travelling by sea and had chosen to go by Eurostar - the provider of a smooth and sleep-enhancing journey.

Feeling decidedly ill and drinking copious amounts of water and sweet tea, I found my way to the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo. The train was excruciatingly slow in Britain, but picked up once we were the other side of the Channel, and before long had arrived in Brussels. Giving the travel centre assistant my best French (but always being answered in English - was it that obvious?!), I bought my ticket to Turnhout."

I arrived in Turnhout at 6.45pm and made my way to the town centre (after first walking in the wrong direction), and then started to panic as I realised I hadn't arranged anywhere to meet up with the group (just as well - Martin had a small delay!). Finally I saw Ed and Doug (both playing for "Chesham 2", aka The Puckaholics) standing in the street, and all was well. And so the drinking began! Whoever discovered hair of the dog should be knighted!"

Martin: "We were booked on the 6:45pm ferry, so had arranged that I would pick Toby up at 2pm and Ralph up at 3pm. However, small delays added to small delays, and it was 2:45 by the time I got to Toby's, which would make it closer to four o'clock before we would get to Ralph's. Toby phoned Ralph to pass on the news, which was very well received by Ralph, as he said he wouldn't have been ready for 3pm anyway.

The roads were really starting to fill up, and we picked up a further delay between Maidenhead and Kingston. Despite a five-minute turnaround, it was nearly half past four by the time we left Kingston. Although our original timetable had had plenty of slack built into it, we had now used most of it up, and really couldn't afford any further delays. However, the traffic gods were not smiling on us, and - much to our dismay - the M25 was at its most car-parky. By the time we finally got through the nose-to-tail crawl that had lasted all the way to the M23 junction, we were so horrendously late that there was virtually no chance of us getting to our ferry on time. Well, not legally, anyway . . .

Foot to the floor, with Toby keeping his eyes peeled for speed cameras, we sped down the rest of the M25, turned off to the M26 and then onto the M20, while Ralph slept the sleep of the innocent in the back. Five miles outside Dover and with about twenty minutes to go before the ferry was due to pull out (yes, we had made up the lost time!), Ralph stirred, looked around with a glazed expression and said "Do we need passports?".

After an initial reaction of "You're joking, aren't you?" turned into the realization that he really did not have his passport with him, we decided to try to pass him off as being asleep in the back of the car, and hope that the emigration officials would not insist on him being woken up to present his passport. We got through the first stage of checks by going "underwater hockey, underwater hockey, underwater hockey" to the Customs oficer, who was so amused by this bizarre concept that he was quite happy to accept the two passports presented to him and not wake the young chap asleep in the back. However, we were not so lucky with the next one.

She was about seventeen, with bottle-blonde hair, a large padded luminous yellow official jacket, and an expression that told us straight away that she wasn't going to be taking any prisoners. Toby and I tried to bluff that we had presented three passports just a minute before - "haven't you got it? No, I haven't got it, haven't you got it?" - but she insisted on seeing three passports before she would let us on board, and when - after "waking" Ralph - we were still unable to produce one per passenger, she cancelled our ticket and told us to make our way to the exit.

After exiting the port we made our way back in to the main building where Ralph made a phone call to his mother to relay the situation. After a short pause, she confirmed that she had found his passport, and also that she would bring  it down to Dover. With nothing more we could do until she arrived, we retired to a nearby pub to eat steaks, drink beer and defrost the atmosphere . . ."

George: "I arrived in Turnhout at 6.45pm and made my way to the town centre (after first walking in the wrong direction), and then started to panic as I realised I hadn’t arranged anywhere to meet up with the group (just as well - Martin had a small delay…). Finally I saw Ed and Doug (both playing for "Chesham 2", aka The Puckaholics) standing in the street, and all was well. And so the drinking began…Whoever discovered hair of the dog should be knighted!"

Kobi: "The trip to Turnhout began by unstrapping myself from the office chair and scrambling for the door to catch the bus which went to Turnhout. Not much to report here - except for a fellow passenger with long hair and striking cheek-bones (I exaggerate) who was being flown to a wedding with a week's notice. We discussed Pooh and East German parodies of music (a rather specialised field for that time of the night) and I managed to convince him that I really *did* need three bus seats to sleep on comfortably (hi hi hi)".

Martin: "After much-needed refreshments of steaks and beer, we returned to the main ferry terminal building for nine o'clock, where Ralph's mother met us ten minutes later with his passport. She was all smiles and geniality, as always, but we suspected that Ralph might be in some very hot water come Sunday evening . . .

The next ferry was due at 9:30, so we had to move quickly, but this time the fates were with us, and twenty minutes later we were on board and bound for Calais.

The main road that would take us due east through France and into Belgium was the E18, and we came out of the ferry port in Calais expecting to find the E18 clearly signposted. However, no such luck: all we had were two forks, both signposted to destinations: that were anything but east. Of course, we chose the wrong one . . .

We quickly realized our mistake, but rectifying it was easier said than done, and we drove about fifteen miles before we came across the first exit, which - much to our annoyance - was a toll road, so that we had to pay fourteen francs to get off, and then another fourteen francs to get back on the other side of the same road. Hmpfh!

We made our way back to Calais and got on the right road, but we had gone only a short way before an orange light came on to tell us that we were almost out of petrol, something that with all the events of the evening had not even slightly impressed itself on our attentions. After some considerable distance we came across a BP station on the other side of the dual carriageway, but there was no sign of any services on our side, or even any exit road that we could use to turn around and raid the BP station.

The miles wore by, still with no sign of any service station, and the situation was now getting desperate. Seventy, sixty, fifty, forty, we were dropping our speed ever lower in an attempt to eke out our our remaining petrol reserves for as long as possible, and it was only after what seemed like an eternity of running on fumes at an excruciating thirty miles per hour that we finally saw the lights of a petrol station. Hurrah! We pulled in, filled the car right to the brim, and then it was back to putting pedal to the metal: target Turnhout.

Fortunately, we did not suffer any further incidents, but it was about quarter past three that we finally rolled into the Grote Markt, the "Big Market Place", a.k.a. town square. Although Danny, our host and tournament organiser, had said that we could call him any time, quarter past three did seem to be rather pushing our luck. With this in mind, and with directions from a couple of passers-by we found our way to a hotel, and enquired about prices of rooms. Unfortunately, they did not have any triples, so we would have had to get two rooms, at a total cost of about £150, so we decided to bite the bullet and call Danny.

Danny answered the phone straight away, and said that we had only just missed him, as he had still been in the bar in the Hotel Terminus in the Grote Markt at three o'clock. However, he duly came out again to fetch us and lead us back to his place where we all fell asleep as soon as heads hit pillows. That was OK for Ralph and Toby, but no such luxury for me: Kobi was due in on the 07:44 train from Brussels, which - allowing for travelling time - meant a grand total of one and three-quarter hours of sleep. Oh joy . . ."