World Cup 2006 Blog

Plain sailing

• Paul Fletcher - Sport Interactive journalist
• 7 Jun 06, 04:28 PM

THE ENGLISH CHANNEL - The ferry is on the move, whisking our camper van towards France.

Everything seems to be going very smoothly, if you'll pardon the pun, - though Ricco only realised he had left the front of the stereo on a sideboard in his house once he had posted his keys through the door.

Expletives spewed forth, followed by a dash through Surrey to retrieve a set of keys from Ricco's wife.

If nothing else, it gave Ricco the opportunity to test his driving skills through winding country lanes.

We have been very impressed with the suggestions to the key issue of what we should call our mobile home.

We are pretty sure which one we are going to pick but more earnest discussions are set to take place as we wind our way through France and into Belgium before spending somewhere to park up tonight.

As I look around the ferry there is a group of American students with their teachers.

Two of the American students I noticed in a newsagents in Dover but they are currently nowhere to be seen, perhaps because in the aforementioned newsagents they were purchasing a magazine of a very specific type while trying not to giggle.

What there is not is anyone wearing an England shirt, which has taken me by surprise given the sense of World Cup fever in England.

Panic not, though, because a customs officer, while making sure we are travelling to Germany for all the right reasons, said that he expected plenty to make their way across the Channel over the next couple of days.