After spending a nice relaxing Christmas in Fort William we headed to Kinlochleven to spend the day at the Ice Factor adventure centre. We started with some indoor rock climbing followed by an outside adventure course which involved traversing an obstacle course suspended 10 metres off the ground. The best part of this was the giant swing that you get to go on at the end.  After a small stop for some lunch (best not to go on boxing day as the kitchen staff are off) Glenn participated in some ice climbing on the worlds biggest indoor ice cube. Overall a fantastic day although we felt it over the next few days.

From here we decided to head to York but unfortunately the car had other ideas. To begin with, just outside of Leeds, we were met with our first motorway traffic jam followed by the car beginning to squeal and overheat. Luckily we were not far from the next motorway services where we made it too safely only to discover that a bolt had snapped off and our cooling system was no longer cooling... not cool. To add insult to injury there was a 4-6 hour wait to get an AA mobile mechanic out plus our car type wasn't allowed to park overnight at the services (designed to stop free camping). Therefore we spent the night in the attached travelodge and the following day we were on our way around lunchtime after the roadside assistance managed to fix the problem.

We high-tailed it to london to get a mechanic to recheck the cooling system as suggested by the AA mechanic. The good news is they advised that no further work was needed. The bad new was we weren't allowed to take the van into London (or anywhere remotely close to it) due to the Low Emission Zone. This meant we spent the weekend in a town south of London called Maidstone aka S#%t hole... where the parking inspectors are the nicest and happiest people in the town. The only good thing about maidstone was we found a good street to regularly park and sleep on. So Monday morning came and we were first in line at the DVLA  (licensing centre) trying to find out where our vehicle transfer papers were so we could leave for Europe. The news was bittersweet because the papers had been processed and posted (to the hostel in the middle of London) but they were unable to print them out for us locally. After contacting the hostel to determine if they had received the papers, only to be told we would have to come in and check ourselves due to the shear amount of mail they get, we decided to bite the bullet and catch the train in. It was the best $50 train fair we've ever spent because as you can guess the papers were there waiting for us.

So onto Dover we went to spend New Years eve, wining and dining at a local hotel (the last accomodation treat for awhile) eagerly awaiting the ferry departure in the morning. Our last view of England, for awhile, was of the white cliffs of Dover and a lot of very hungover passengers.