Stelling Minnis

It was an interesting journey to Stellin Minnis. We decided to travel to a campsite near the tunnel the day before just to make life easy and I was so glad we did. As we pootled down the motorway we came across slow moving traffic which eventually cleared but as we sped up we started to get an horrendous noise from the van. I quickly decided it wasn’t engine noise and my mind turned to the fact we had new tyres put on the day before, so we pulled over to the hard shoulder and had a look, but Bertie took up the whole width of the hard shoulder and we could see nothing obvious. We were 5 miles from a service station, so I drove us on. Once at the services with a bit of investigation I noticed 2 missing wheel nuts and two could be turned with my fingers all on one wheel! A nice AA man rearranged the bolts, told us to go buy a lottery ticket and went on at length about how the van would simply have flipped over if the wheel had actually come off. He tightened all the wheel nuts finding a few further loose ones! We spent some time on the phone trying to source bolts but on a Saturday afternoon this is nigh on impossible. So after a coffee to calm us down and with only 4 bolts on 2 wheels we set off again with much assurance from the AA man that we were safe to drive it. With another 2 hold ups on route we arrived at the campsite somewhat later than expected. The site was nicely located, quiet and generally pleasant although I still struggle paying £18 for a pitch with no facilities. We walked to the village and around the common, but to be honest nothing to report, just a pleasant area, 15 mins from the channel tunnel.