Another cool start to the day. I could see my breath as I was readying Ginny. Again the day was mostly motorway as we had just over 250 miles to go to Le Tunnel.
The first stint was about 190 miles and was to pay a visit to Charles Devall's grave at Desplanque Farm Cemetery, La Chapelle-d'Armentières, which is about 10 miles west of Lille. This was to be my fourth visit and one where I had decided to put an artificial poppy with a laminated picture of Charles alongside the headstone. I had carried this around in my topbox for the entire trip, protected by a 1.5l plastic water bottle. Luckily it survived.
We did the whole stint in one go, something like 3.5 hours. we encountered a few sets of roadworks which slowed us down a bit, but we were able to filter through most of them successfully. We came off motorway and cut across country via Dinant. This was by far the most interesting part of the journey as we came to the River Meuse, turned right, to be confronted with the road going between two high rocks. I've since discovered this is called Rocher Bayard. Remarkable! Google describes it as a tourist attraction.
About 5km up the road was the fuel stop. It happened to be on a big retail site, boasting a Burger King and a Hyper U supermarket. We had our lunch at BK, then we went across to the supermarket, so I could buy the sweeties and beers I was hoping we had time for. We only had another 60 miles to go so had plenty of time to play with. Having done the deed with the poppy, I now had a void in the topbox, which was just big enough for some cans and sweetie bags, and as I was wearing my micro fleece and gilet, I also had space in one of my panniers! 😉
We hit the motorway again for the final blast to the tunnel. We were really early and I started wondering if we might get a charge for ariving too early, so slowed our pace a little. The more I thought about it, I thought it is, do not arrive more than 4 hours before departure, so we were ok. On arrival, we were given the choice of 2 earlier trains, so we took the earliest. As it turned out, we think we ended up on an even earlier one, which had been delayed, possibly by a broken down car on board, because they kept apologising for the delay. Result!
Phil messaged Catherine to let her know we would be much earlier than we'd expected and before we knew it we were back in blighty and on the motorway. Not for the first time, having done thousands of miles abroad, there's always some knob does something stupid in the 40 miles ride back home. This time a car sitting in the middle lane, with nothing in the nearside, didn't like it as I went by and pointed that he should be in that lane. Subsequently, he sped up so I couldn't pull over in front of him. Eventually though, I got in front and moved straight to the nearside, followed by Phil. Shame there were no police about, to nick him for driving without due care and attention. Anyway, the rest of the journey was ok and we returned home to a warm reception from my good lady.
After changing, unpacking and some financial housekeeping, we ordered noodles from the chinese, which I walked up to collect. Afterwards, Phil and I got in front of the tv and watched Newcastle v Barcelona. Tomorrow night Catherine and I will watch something together. MotoGP? 🤔😜
I'm hoping that tomorrow I can get the phone fixed and return to some form of normality. It's been a strain not being able to use google maps or translate, or to access my financial sites on the laptop because they want confirmation via the app! Maybe I need two phones like Phil!
That's it for now. I'll try and get some stats together, as I know how much you all love stats. Till then.
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