Sometime during the night the crew jumped ship (at Roscoff) and was replaced by a different version, this did not disturb our slumber; we churned on through to a calm Bay of Biscay.
The views of the coast were impressive; our clearly nervous Captain obviously keen to avoid a Concordia type scenario chose a route avoiding the large rocks and souvenir type lighthouses. We did get close to the rocks at one point as evidenced by the sudden rush to the duty free shop, people holding mobile phones in the air filming, and the shouted instructions from the mums on board to 'finish your chips, kids' ('finis votre frites, mes enfants'). Fortunately the disaster was avoided, as the crew were ordered to throw off the pet dogs (and any cats), starting with the 'yappy, rat like ones' to lighten and lift the bow (...this bit was possibly made up). We all breathed a sigh of relief - as did the three Labrador puppies on deck eight, and still our craft carried on, the engines working hard to close the gap between us and Santander.
Now, (normally) prior to setting off on a trip of this length and complexity, some consideration is made to the route one would take. We took the opportunity over a cup of coffee in the (now empty) dog exercise area to pour over the 2004 Halfords map of Europe for five minutes and we began to formulate a plan – which might hold together so long as no new roads had been built or old ones dug up in the last eight years. I could now enjoy my Salad Niscoise, and Tony could savour his burger with hash brown buns avec frites in complete confidence.
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