234 LE BOOKED...

The final booking has been made. We are now officially booked onto Le Shuttle at Folkestone. This took so much longer than I thought it would. I assumed we would pick a train and sort it out, but choosing our departure time has taken a long time.

We seemed to have been discussing this on various nights outs for months so I eventually did some back of a fag packet maths and put it to the group. Leave Liverpool at 07:00, stop at a service station on the other side of Birmingham - I chose Northampton at random - for 10:30, have a bacon butty and a wee, then leave at 11:30, arriving in Folkestone around 14:00.

Everyone gave it a thumbs-up, but no one actually confirmed they were happy with it. I also mentioned paying £50 extra for a flexible ticket, which gives us a 4-hour window around our departure time, meaning that if the motorways aren't playing nice, we don't need to worry as much. Also, if we arrive early, they may try to squeeze us on an earlier train.

We thought we had it sorted and just needed to pay. Then Carl started sending messages about finding a cheaper train and whether he should book this. I sent him the message about the flexible ticket and got another thumbs up. For some reason, he also thought we were travelling on Monday! It was lucky he was bored at work and checking Le Shuttle, as he could have been on the continent two days earlier!!

Finally, last night I took the plunge and booked our train tickets. I took a screen grab and sent it to our WhatsApp group. Shortly after, Carl sent his screengrab, and then Rachel shared hers. We were all booked on the train, at the same time, with the same flexible ticket. <phew>

I had a call from our Comms Manager at work, who asked for more information about the trip to include on our company website. Ellis worked for the same company as me, so I wanted his former colleagues to see what we are doing in his name and hopefully contribute a few quid to the pot.

She sent over the article for review; it was really good - you can tell she does this for a job, unlike me, who is an enthusiastic amateur! I'm waiting for it to go live, and that is pretty much everything off my prep list.