Over night at the quarry

The first day on the road is always a difficult one especially with regards to your first overnight spot as one is not yet used to the system in the country and where you may and may not sleep. Darren had been driving around, looking for a camp site. Andy and I used to the life on the road said to him not to worry, we will find a spot. The day was coming to a close and we spotted something that looked like just the place. It was an old deserted Quarry, it seemed all fenced off and long out of commission. There was an office building in front of the rusty locked gate. The windows were broken and half boarded up. We sent Darren a locator and waited.

It wasn’t long and in he rolled with our ship. A 7.5 meter long van, 3.2 meters wide and 3.5 meters high, quite a whale to manoeuvre along the Scottish farm roads. Andy and I took a while to get the ship into place, but eventually with much in and outs we finally berthed the beast and settled for the evening. Darren not too happy, but we convinced him, we are safe and he only needs to think about driving off if a soldier points an automatic weapon through the window – you can imagine, this did a lot to calm the nerves. We ate and Andy and I bunked down and we were gone.

Suddenly the van was rocking violently; I awoke not knowing what was going on. Darren was up and scurrying around mumbling something about people, trucks and the rest. I basically turned over and told him to go back to sleep. A little while later a jack hammer started to thump away at rock in the distance. Andy was now also awake with the commotion, asking what was happening. I joked, don’t worry, there are just some illegal miners drilling holes to blow us up for parking in the quarry.

I had hardly said that and all hell broke loose. It seemed like someone was about to blow the place up. Darren shot over all of us and into the driver’s seat and cranked the van into life. Andy came shooting out of his bunk as I headed out of the door to investigate. I looked around and a whole road working squad was setting up to get to work on the road. There was a second semi explosion and I swung around, there was an old steam roller blasting into life that was causing all the problems.

I was about to let the guys know what was the cause of the chaos when all I could see was this massive van of ours doing the most incredible manoeuvres in this little space, doors flapping, things clanging around inside and Andy hanging on for dear life inside. Darren had this wild look in his eyes as he lurched out of the quarry and into the road, tires screeching door flapping and a cloud of diesel smoke as they headed on down the road making a movie style getaway.