As usual Alison was excited to hear what progress there was on Tuah. She left me at breakfast to sort out the room extension and came straight to the room expecting to see an email form John. But as predicted there was nothing otherwise we would have heard last night before John closed up for the night. Today’s breakfast was worse than usual with no bread and no juices. As it turned out the stupid bugger at the front desk had not turned the juice dispenser……doh!

At about 10am John emailed us saying that the container had been arranged to be transported to ARREEF where it would be unpacked and gave us the contact person and number to keep track of the progress. When I rang Cathy at 10.30am she said that Tuah had already been unpacked and waiting for me. Now that set me wondering when the container was actually sent to ARREEF.

We set about how to get to ARREEF and decided to take the bus to Cedar Grove and take a cab from there on to save some unnecessary expense. But the bus driver told us to take the 45 bus from Cedar Grove to Portsmouth town and take a cab from there instead. The reason for that is to avoid paying for the tunnel charges if we took a cab. Little did he know that the toll charges had been abolished years ago as we found out from the cab driver. There had been talk to reintroduce the toll as there was plan to build a second tunnel which is still in the pipeline.

We got to ARREEF at 2.20pm and everyone seemed to know who I was. Cathy was at the door to greet us and then came Jack James (JJ) who eagerly wanted to take me to Tuah to get him going. His battery was low and couldn’t be started but JJ had the battery charger ready. But before that I had to sign the safe receipt of Tuah. JJ had difficulty in getting the charger going and it took some changing of cables before he managed it. After a couple of tries Tuah’s engine came to life, thank God for that. All I have to do now is make sure that I don’t switch the engine off before the battery is fully charged. JJ was extremely helpful and even got the tyres pumped.

What a relief to see Tuah all in one piece and functioning as normal. It had been a long wait but worth the waiting. After thanking JJ and Cathy we got the Garmin plugged in and were on our way back to the hotel.  The Garmin took us through unfamiliar roads but we got to Day’s Inn without any problem. I was a little apprehensive driving on the wrong side of the road again but it didn’t take too long to get accustomed to it. The only problem was when I wanted to turn left which required some distance before the junction to switch lanes. That’s where the Garmin played an important role.

I asked Alison to call Robin to tell her that we were not going to make it to her office today and that we would come in tomorrow instead. Alison didn’t waste too much time and started unpacking Tuah as soon as we arrived but the rain stopped her from doing too much. The boxes were then unpacked and we had everything on my bed with me complaining how I was going to sleep knowing full well that everything would be packed up in Tuah by nightfall or put aside.

I then thought I had better email John to tell him that I had got Tuah out of ARREEF and thank him for his help. I didn’t forget to ask him to email me the invoice for the extra charges (God knows how much?) that had been incurred due to the customs hold up. 

Tonight we celebrate by having Chinese takeaway!