Nice one Malc, a real baptism of fire, can you imagine some of today’s nancy boys reaction to the offer of a job like that 
My first ‘proper’ trip was similar, I’d done a few trips to Germany, so the mysteries of Dover were not so mysterious, but the part where I had to ‘Find Jack and give him this compressor head gasket, he’s in a routiers in France, somewhere near Macon, all the drivers will know it’ was the bit where it stopped being an easy job 
At least I found Le Mistral, The Pub at Bourg and the Bakehouse on my first trip, I never found Jack and his broken Daf though, not until I eventually found out about Jayat
So there I was in France in the summer, covered in grease, taking a compressor apart, then a day or so later I was on the beach getting ■■■■■■ in Viarreggio, I said goodbye to my last Brit and went and tipped and reloaded, I then found another Brit when I was clearing customs in Vercelli (I think) Oh good, I thought, I’ll run back with this bloke, he’ll know what he’s doing…Wrong It was Bloxotrix and he was on his first trip too talk about the blind leading the blind