13th July
The ferry trip was calm and uneventful. Before we left Holland, up on the sundeck I watched for an hour as a driver loaded large trailers of refrigerated produce (the sound of all the refrigeration units was deafening) up on the top deck. I could not work out how cleverly he arranged them so that there were literally only a few inches to spare on the whole deck. I wondered whether he had a scheme because not only did he need to shunt each one up there, he need to turn these 40 foot long monsters then make his own getaway and reappear for the next one.

As I watched, huge ships of huge containers sailed toward the setting sun and I had a strong sense of the vastness of the volume of European trade and the sheer physicality and scale of its components.

As I felt leaving Portsmouth, there is something about sea travel and sea borne freight that connects with a long long history, in a way that flying does not.

After fish and chips and a glass of wine, I stopped into the very air-conditioned smoking room. These rooms seem to always be full of interesting marginal characters, the respectable having sensibly given up the habit. A Dutch couple are there and a man with a long greasy ponytail and in a kilt arrives and immediately engages them in hushed and intense conversation – within about 3 minutes we know that he joined the navy at 19, fought in the Falklands, had a Dutch girlfriend and a friend who was killed in the conflict and his attitudes to sex and relationships. The couple are genuinely interested and moved. Its time to leave and get to bed. I know we will be woken up at 5.30 and I have made the mistake of staying up too late on this ferry – though that was going out where you lose an hour. Up on the deck while counting the trucks I remarked to myself ‘I made it’. Like the last trips, enjoyable and grueling, sometimes boring, full of fundamental self-doubt, the journeys have small moments of intense satisfaction.