With so much to do before embarking on our journey, our last few weeks in London went by incredibly quickly.

Before we knew it the whirlwind of house clearing, leaving parties, box packing, and general loose end tying was over. It was time to go.

We hurriedly packed the last of our belongings into the Sunny, newly outfitted with a roof box for this its final and most epic road trip. A quick check of  the oil & water, (honest Dad!) and we were off, rolling out of the quiet Luton cul-de-sac our friends Alex & Peta call home and onto the M25, bound for Portsmouth.

The first stop on our journey was to be the Hellfest Festival in Clisson, France. So from Portsmouth we caught the same overnight ferry to the French port of Le Havre as we did the previous year, arriving fresh and relaxed after a good night’s sleep. When we eventually stopped for breakfast in the Sunshine of a French motorway rest area, it finally began to sink in that this time there would be no return journey to Blighty. For us it was Australia or bust!

Just as it had when we attended in 2008, Hellfest once more offered arguably the most outstanding lineup of the European Summer metal festivals. The big names were a bit uninspiring, (Motley Crue? Marylin Manson?? Manowar???) but further down the bill, Hellfest laid on a veritable smorgasbord of tasty metal goodness.

We stocked up on supplies at the local branch if LIDL and set up camp amongst the wheat fields and grape vines, ready to begin European festival season 2009.

As it turned out, Hellfest was even better this year than last, the Sun beaming down for 3 fantastic days on a noticeably larger crowd than 2008, (possibly due to the utterly atrocious lineup at Graspop).

There were some awesome performances in the Rock Hard tent by Samael, Cathedral, Napalm Death, Moonspell and the mighty Grand Magus.

Entombed were in especially good form and appeared to have as much fun as the crowd as they tore through tracks old and new.

Outside in the sunshine were Down, who sounded great despite Phil Anselmo accusing the crowd of being drunk, (pot? kettle?). Also bringing the groove from the USA were Clutch. We were seeing them for the first time and they went down very well with the cold beer and afternoon Sun. Bringing out Wino from Saint Vitus for a guest appearance was very cool too…

Anthrax sounded fantastic with their new singer  – a real shame they were to split with him only a few weeks later. But it’s not just the ridiculously good lineup that makes Hellfest the great show that it is. The French give their festival touches of ambience that are truly superb, especially when the Sun goes down…

As we wandered back to the tent, Manowar’s fireworks signalling Hellfest’s conclusion, it was good to know we still had more festival goodness on the way before the Summer was done.

After the craziness that was our final weeks in London and then 3 days of partying at Hellfest, it was time for some much-needed downtime. We made our way toward the coast near Bordeaux in search of a campground, wary to avoid Camping La Pressoir after our last visit, (we and our then travelling companions Reb, Al and Jess were forced to make an early-morning escape in the Sunny along an improvised garden road after discovering the gate was locked until reception opened a few hours later).

As it turned out we found another, much nicer location…

The campground we ended up at was on the Dune of Pyla, Europe’s largest sand dune about 60km south of Bordeaux. It was a beautiul spot so we stopped for a couple of days to drink Champagne, take in the beautiful sunsets and organise all the crap we’d haphazardly thrown into the car shortly before our departure from Mother England.

We also started doing a little planning and soon realised that we had a week less than we thought to get to Slovenia for Metal Camp. So we bid the west coast of France adieu and high tailed it across the south to Cannes to have a beer with some former workmates…

and marvel at how disgustingly rich some people in this world are…

Ah well, it’s only money right? The next day we climbed back aboard the humble Sunny and plotted a course eastward – to Italy!

Some more photos of Hellfest 2009 and our French adventures are here.

                          

Being sponsors of a race, Sarah’s employers were given a number of premier admission passes to last Sunday’s Ascott race day. She was lucky enough to nab 2 of them so we went along to try our luck.

Usually racing is a purely Spring/Summer event for us so going in the winter was a slightly different experience, ie it was bloody cold.

However our passes did allow us admission to the upper indoor levels of the stadium so we managed to keep warm most of the day. Exceptions were when I ventured out  to the betting circle before each race looking for good odds and when we went out to watch the races themselves. Holding cold beers on these occasions led to almost frostbitten fingers!

Last time we were at Ascott we had a particularly lucky day, our best bet being Sarah’s £10 on a 14-1 shot that came in. Said bet was based on the fact that the horse’s name was "Misty Dancer", (Sarah’s cat was also called Misty) but I’m not one to look a gift horse (pun intended) in the mouth.

This time round we weren’t quite so fortunate, at least not in the first few races. We had a few close calls but nothing that paid out. Our first win of the day came during what turned out to be the most amusing race of the day. One horse threw its rider (this was not the amusing part) but then proceeded to continue running around the track, jumping all of the fences.

It actually ended up crossing the line first in front of our horse. Fortunately for us there’s some legislation somewhere in the racing rulebook that says both horse and jockey have to cross first to win, making our second-crossing runner the ultimate winner! Hurrah!

By the last race we’d had a little more luck and were almost back to evens. So we bought ourselves some warming gin + tonics, (the blue Bombay Sapphire gin poured into the tonic bottles – classy!) placed some strategically spread bets across almost the entire field… and held our breaths…

After all of our horses crossed the line placed absolutely nowhere we started breathing again, consoling ourselves with the fact that the £40 or so we were down was about equal to the price of the free passes we’d gotten anyway. Ah well, win or lose it was, (as always) a fun day out. Probably won’t go back until there’s a bit more sunshine about though.

On the way home we stopped in at Richmond to meet up with Barnaby. After dropping in to our old work local The Sun for a pint, we went on to enjoy a ridiculously large and extremely tasty tapas meal at the local Spanish restaurant.

Not a bad way to spend a Saturday!