The Last Legs

We breakfasted on spiced ham, cheese and eggs, and of course, the all important coffee. Then we headed back up to the van to drop off our stuff before heading for a look around the cobbled streets for half an hour or so.

There were some kids with their dad checking out the van (it did stand out a bit) when we got back up the hill. I had some juggling balls in my pocket so, full of the joys of not having died here the previous night, I juggled for them for a little bit before we headed back down the steps to see what there was to see.

It was a quiet morning in a beautiful picturesque archetypal Germanic town, so I spent a few moments watching swans on the river, while Jonathan wrestled with his camera, or more to the point, wrested with the fact that it was filled to capacity. We really wanted to make some distance today, so we didn’t spend to long loitering, but it felt good to have a little look around before heading on our way.

After the cold and snow of the previous night we didn’t complain that after a clear morning it became a rainy grey day which made sure that the roads were clear and we made good progress. We passed borders into Belgium and then into France without a single problem and the windscreen washer jets even defrosted eventually, meaning we didn’t have to keep stopping every twenty minutes.

We took a break at a service station in France to get lunch, and with my new found linguistic confidence I even ordered lunch in French only to discover that the reply came back at me at three times the speed of sound so I never understood a word of it. I nodded and said “Oui” and fortunately got pretty much what I asked for when it turned up. Merci.

We headed on our way, and I’m happy to say, the gorillas’ batteries warmed up again (‘Ole Ole’) and he was back singing strongly keeping us entertained when we weren’t singing renditions of that classic old ditty “We’re not in a ditch”.

As we drove into Dunkirk to get the ferry across the channel, the sun was setting in front of us with poetic majesty. It was made even more beautiful by the huge chimney pumping out vast amounts of billowing smoke into the sky for the sun to bounce its orangey golden glow beneath. It made the single wind turbine that was next to it appear incredibly plain, although it undoubtedly added something to the picture, if only irony.

Once into Dunkirk we started looking around for a Hypermarket to storm so that we could pick up all kinds of cheap goodies, as you do. We unfortunately found that we managed to reach the Ferry terminal without actually finding one that suited our purposes. Jonathan then decided to add one final bit of drama to the whole event by deciding that he’d lost the ticket home.

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