My route home - nearly

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This is almost the route I took home. I got deliberately lost around Waalwijk, "Whats the point of just taking the boring highway?" I thought. It was a beautiful day.

The Netherlands looked like one big farm play-set, laid out on a child's playroom floor. I drove down single track roads, through groves of trees, along canals. Sometimes the road didn't cross the canal and didn't go the way I wanted - South West. Several times I had to go back and find another way.

It was showering and everything seemed wet, even when the sun was out.

When I crossed over the border near Hoogstraten, I cheered and whooped. Although in the best tradition of motorized convoys, I just powered through Belgium, stopping only in Bruges to buy some chocolates, beer and Fois Gras.

At the Channel Tunnel the car overheated. I pulled up to the ticket booth and steam started to leak out from under the bonnet.

Cursing Gert-Jan's name I waited for the EuroTunnel mechanic to come and certify that I wasn't going to blow up 10 miles underneath the Channel.

I called Gert-Jan to ask how to open the bonnet (the handbook is in Dutch and I had forgot to ask) He said his wife had been driving home past the hotel I'd stayed in the night before and seen the car in the light of a street lamp. She'd known it was Gert-Jan's and knew he had sold it. I couldn't tell if he was happy or sad, but I knew they were going to miss it, and he wasn't to blame for it over-heating.

I cursed myself for speeding through Belgium like a Panzer on amphetamines.

Luckily there was an hour before my train for the car to cool down, and me to find some water to put in the radiator.

As I was pouring the water in from a bottle, a man pulled up and asked: "have you got enough there?" he opened his boot to get me a bottle of water and I saw it was absolutely stuffed with champagne.

"Have you got enough there!" I said, and he looked at me with a touch of irritation.

On the Kent side, I got completely lost and my phone died, no GPS and no phone call if I broke down again.

I had to buy something called "a map". Quite peculiar.

Trying to avoid the motorway, I got lost. At one point I found myself going the wrong way down the M20.

I decided to stop at my Dad's house in London on the way home.

"I've done something a bit stupid," I said.

"You've bought shares in an Irish Bank?" he countered, after thinking a moment.

We both agreed if it was a stupid thing to do, it wasn't the worst thing that I could have done.