Where's Bertie? He's back in his usual spot at the Aire in Bergues, where he has been quite a few times before (including at the start of this trip).
Weather: Sunny start (14 degrees), overcast end (20 degrees).
There's a great benefit to travelling at 7am on a Saturday morning: the roads are empty. That meant that today, rather than recommending a 54km motorway route that would take 50 minutes (=at least an hour in Bertie) to get to Maastricht, Google told us to take a 40km cross-country route that would take us just under 40 minutes. The downside at this time of year is that it's dark, so we didn't get to see anything of the places we drove through.
Parking for the parkrun turned out to be easy at a quarter to eight too, as we were able to pull Bertie into a space within 250m from the start/finish area. It did cost us €4.50 for 3 hours, but that would have also been the case if we'd gone to the car park I'd originally intended to use, 1.2km away.
Curious sculpture on the parkrun course - a dead giraffe in a cage. Of the three snaps I took, all without breaking stride, this is the only one that didn't come out too blurry.
Yesterday I'd been unsure as to whether I would be able to parkrun today at all, even at a walk. Today I ran the whole course*, starting tentatively and getting faster as I went, without a single peep from the knee. How?!
Chatting to Joanna and Rob (who we met in Köln on 1 Oct) after we'd all finished, they recommended that, even though we were pushed for time, we should spend half an hour walking into the city for a quick look at the place. Thus we didn't hang around to see if anyone went for coffee after the run, but nipped back to Bertie, grabbed a coffee and followed Joanna's directions into the city.
It turns out for the second time in a week, I'd completely misjudged the size of a place by looking at it on Google Maps, and thus it was possible to get from where we were parked into the centre and back in the space of 40 minutes (which is what we had left on our parking ticket by the time we set out).
Definitely worthwhile. We'd be happy to run that parkrun again, and to spend more time ambling around the historic city.
The parkrun ran along the path to the left of the water, our route into town went through a gate in the wall to the right
Non-fountaining fountain, square, churches
Sculpture in square
At 11 we were on the road with a reasonably long drive ahead of us. The first stop was for LPG (easier to find in Belgium than in the UK), and as it was gone noon we took the opportunity to stop for lunch before proceeding to the fuel station. There we failed. We've had many failed attempts to fill up with LPG over the years, so it didn't occur to us that maybe pre-payment was required until I saw the machines as we were leaving. I reset the SatNav for another fuel station just off the motorway a distance hence, and three fuel stations later, we succeeded (there were four stations almost in a row; it took us three goes to find the one with LPG). Popped some diesel in too; we knew it would be cheaper in France, but weren't sure whether last week's shortages were still ongoing.
Arriving in Bergues the height barrier at Lidl was open, so it was an easier job than last time to pick up a few cases of wine. A nip across the road landed us in the Aire for our final night before an early Chunnel crossing back to the UK in the morning.
(*I became a Cow in the process, achieving my Half-Cowell by having completed 50 different parkrun events. Twenty four of those have been outside of the UK.)
Weather: Sunny start (14 degrees), overcast end (20 degrees).
There's a great benefit to travelling at 7am on a Saturday morning: the roads are empty. That meant that today, rather than recommending a 54km motorway route that would take 50 minutes (=at least an hour in Bertie) to get to Maastricht, Google told us to take a 40km cross-country route that would take us just under 40 minutes. The downside at this time of year is that it's dark, so we didn't get to see anything of the places we drove through.
Parking for the parkrun turned out to be easy at a quarter to eight too, as we were able to pull Bertie into a space within 250m from the start/finish area. It did cost us €4.50 for 3 hours, but that would have also been the case if we'd gone to the car park I'd originally intended to use, 1.2km away.
Yesterday I'd been unsure as to whether I would be able to parkrun today at all, even at a walk. Today I ran the whole course*, starting tentatively and getting faster as I went, without a single peep from the knee. How?!
Chatting to Joanna and Rob (who we met in Köln on 1 Oct) after we'd all finished, they recommended that, even though we were pushed for time, we should spend half an hour walking into the city for a quick look at the place. Thus we didn't hang around to see if anyone went for coffee after the run, but nipped back to Bertie, grabbed a coffee and followed Joanna's directions into the city.
It turns out for the second time in a week, I'd completely misjudged the size of a place by looking at it on Google Maps, and thus it was possible to get from where we were parked into the centre and back in the space of 40 minutes (which is what we had left on our parking ticket by the time we set out).
Definitely worthwhile. We'd be happy to run that parkrun again, and to spend more time ambling around the historic city.
At 11 we were on the road with a reasonably long drive ahead of us. The first stop was for LPG (easier to find in Belgium than in the UK), and as it was gone noon we took the opportunity to stop for lunch before proceeding to the fuel station. There we failed. We've had many failed attempts to fill up with LPG over the years, so it didn't occur to us that maybe pre-payment was required until I saw the machines as we were leaving. I reset the SatNav for another fuel station just off the motorway a distance hence, and three fuel stations later, we succeeded (there were four stations almost in a row; it took us three goes to find the one with LPG). Popped some diesel in too; we knew it would be cheaper in France, but weren't sure whether last week's shortages were still ongoing.
Arriving in Bergues the height barrier at Lidl was open, so it was an easier job than last time to pick up a few cases of wine. A nip across the road landed us in the Aire for our final night before an early Chunnel crossing back to the UK in the morning.
Managed to find the time to imitate art on our way into Maastricht. Without a separate camera operator, we had to take it in turns.
(*I became a Cow in the process, achieving my Half-Cowell by having completed 50 different parkrun events. Twenty four of those have been outside of the UK.)
Welcome home, and thanks for the donation!
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