Day minus one : Jack's departure

The first leg of our roadtrip would be to take the ferry from Portsmouth and then to drive down to enjoy a few days at Claire and Bruce's place in France.

The training centre had a load of shipping containers, containing loads of body armour, and boots, gloves and helmets, and the overlayers. The first time, getting ready took about half an hour, as we had to find the right sizes of everything, and figure out how on earth to put it all on correctly. (Dad's head was the biggest problem, and only 2 out of all the helmets actually fitted!).

The centre was huge, with a massive track with all sorts of jumps and ditches, and berms. There was a big field for speed runs and even our first jumps, and a forest track and buggy track. To one side there was a massive inflatable airbag (which was apparently strong enough to land a jeep on safely), this was for making it safe for when people practised doing big jumps and backflips! Though we didn't get as far as trying it ourselves, it was amazing to watch other people have their first tries.

Note ....