C2A: Into Belgium

Wake up very early for the ferry. I feel like what I imagine the grave feels like. My joints creak and my head pounds. I fill up a Gatorade bottle with tapwater and chug it down.

Then we head out the door and ride down to the ferry.

We’re the first ones on but the last ones off. We doze and then we debark and we’re in France. We ride through Calais on the right side of the road. My phone provider sends me a threatening text indicating that overages on data will cost a heady sum. (This is why I haven’t attached images to this one: no WiFi at the moment.)

Shortly we leave the road for a winding set of cyclepaths through the fields. The paths are paved marble-smooth and well-signposted. We follow them for 20km without seeing a car.

Through Gravelines and into a town called Loon-Plage for lunch. I get a Flemish dish with a bunch of aspic and Sam gets a cheesy chicken casserole. Both of them are fantastic. I hadn’t realised how much I missed European food. They go down with good Belgian beer. Propa stuff.

On to Grande-Synthe and Dunkirk, where we join a cyclepath along the railway lines. Long local electric trains whiz past as the landscape turns more and more to dune. We arrive at the Fort des Dunes, which has something to do with the Dunkirk evacuation, though it’s not clear quite what.

A little further on we come to the border with Belgium. We stop for water at a petrol station. On the other side of the border, the trails are tidy and straight, the cyclepaths well marked and freshly painted. The towns are all immaculate and posh-looking, although strangely empty of people, given that it’s a Friday evening. We pass through Veurne and then Avekapelle and then turn off into a dusty lane between rows of wheat and potato.

Soon we’re at the garden where we intend to camp for the night. We pitch the tent in the shade of an old farmhouse and are invited to join our host for dinner. She keeps horses and chickens on a smallholding in a quiet part of the countryside. The far-off sound of electric trains comes to us now and again, and the evening call of a peacock. We sit with them at the table and talk about Europe and about Flanders and the Dutch language until the sun goes down and the dogs, Venn and Bob, need walking. While our host is away, we zonk hard.