Thursday 17 January 2019

Sunday 13 January - Izegem, Belgium

Where's Bertie? He's outside the Hymer dealer in Izegem, Belgium.

The destination on this trip is firmly 'south', but not without a small detour north to visit our Hymer dealer to (hopefully!) get the final warranty issues sorted before Bertie goes out of warranty at the end of the month. This is the visit that had to be rearranged from early December, just a few days after our previous trip got suddenly, and slightly dramatically, curtailed.

It's less than two hours to get here from Calais, even tootling along at 80km/h, but we broke the journey anyway, with a stop at the lake just outside Ypres.

There we listened to the rain hammer down, and watched white horses being blown up on the water (conditions that didn't seem to be offputting to the fishermen, nor the various groups of walkers we saw), whilst we had cups of tea and contemplated heading out into the weather.

On the plus side, the temperature was at least 15 degrees warmer than last time we were in Ypres (during the 'Beast from the East' last March), and by the time we stepped out of the door suitably clad in Lycra, the rain had slowed to a quiet patter. Mick ran two laps of the lake, I ran three, and except for the return leg of each lap (which was into the wind), a good time was had.

Later in the afternoon we completed the final hop up to Izegem, where we settled Bertie into one of the overnight parking slots, plugged him into the free electric and watched the final light fade from the sky, hoping for a rather quieter night than we'd had at Calais (boy racers in a multi-storey car park nearby, using the building as a sound amplifier, and motorhomes coming and going all night, due to the proximity to the Eurotunnel terminal).

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