After our journey from hell in the French mountains, surely the Gods were going to look on us favourably as we left Palma for France.

Well, it turns out they weren’t. Honestly, we couldn’t make this stuff up….

Here’s a pic of the aftermath:

The upshot is this - 2 days ago we nearly lost the van, the boat and all our worldly possessions in a pretty frightening encounter. In fact, we’re lucky we walked away from this one relatively unscathed. Let’s start from the beginning…

It was supposed to be a momentous day…  You see it was the Slug’s birthday today. The big 1-0-0.

 Today she officially became a veteran of the road. As a birthday treat we treated her to a full tank so she was purring through France on her way to Sanary Sur Mer. Unfortunately, what with the birthday celebrations, I was a bit too tired to make the journey in one trip, so we pulled up for the night in a service station.

Sleeping arrangements in the Slug are as follows - Jonny camps out in the front of the van using our sports mat as his mattress. I slumber in the back using a variety of old spinnakers as my bed. Apart from being unbelievably cold, it’s quite a tidy - and more importantly cheap - setup.

Here’s where the problems begin:

 About 2.30am I wake up for a toilet break. I realise it’s a bad idea and quickly race back to the van before I suffer hypothermia. I settle down and doze back off to sleep.

At 3.05am I am awoken by a deafening crash and Jonny screaming in the front of the van. I shoot awake wondering what on earth is going on. I’m disorientated because I’ve been asleep.

The first thought that goes through my head is that the boat has fallen off the roof, the noise was that loud.

(Jonny later said that he thought another vehicle had piled into the side of us in slow motion, like his life was flashing before his eyes.)

Coming to my senses, I realise there’s an extra pair of arms flying around in the front of the van.

The crashing sound had been the driver window being broken - right above Jonny’s head - and the extra pair of arms was one pair of a gang of intruders trying to steal the van. They’d obviously seen me go to the toilet but not seen me come back, and had waited until this opportune moment to try and make away with the Slug.

Jonny had instintively gone into Operation Maximum Pain, and began kicking the intruder from the front seats. Unfortunately, his legs were in his sleeping bag which also got caught up on the gear stick, meaning his kicks were about as hard as a wet rag. But luckily, with the combination of the kicking flapping plus the sheer shock of finding somebody in the van, it was enough to deter the thieving scum, and they ran.

Somehow, the bugger managed to grab my wallet in the process, but I guess we’re lucky that that is all they took.

We’re beginning to think we have bad karma. In fact, we have scrapped our training sessions in place of a more ‘My Name Is Earl’ approach. The benefits of cancelling out our bad karma clearly outweighs any potential benefit to be gained through our normal training.

First on our list of intentions was to donate £10 to the most deserving charity we could think of. But alas, my credit cards were in my wallet!