Where is Bertie? He is parked at a small marina just outside of Peruwelz in Belgium, at a cost of €5 per night. We also splurged €2 each on tokens for the shower.
Weather: Foggy drive to Folkestone, but warm (19 degrees as we left Canterbury at 0430). Overcast with some rain as we drove through France, clearing to sunshine by mid-morning. 28 degree max.
Which fool decided that an 0548 Chunnel crossing was a good idea? Well, both of us really, and sufficiently recently that we remembered making the positive choice to suffer a 0400 alarm over the alternative of a late evening crossing that would see us arrive in France at midnight. A daytime crossing was off the table; even antisocially timed crossings are expensive enough at this time of year.
So, we were up at 0400, and having established last night that we couldn't pay for our entire stay in Canterbury until the clock had gone past midnight, I took a walk across the car park to the payment machine whilst Mick readied Bertie for travel. A pleasant surprise that the car park actually costs £4 per day, rather than £8 per night, so one night is £8 (i.e. two days) whereas two nights is only £12 (I'm sure we've stayed there for two nights before, so this shouldn't have come as a surprise).
The drive to Folkestone was unpleasant. The fog was dense in places and my night vision is terrible (I wasn't driving, but as a passenger I still like to see where the road is), but we got there and found the Chunnel busier than one might expect at that time of day. As we queued for each of the processes, all seemingly planned with inefficiency in mind, we pondered what it would be like if Disney World ran the Eurotunnel.
My activity whilst under the sea was to find a destination for today. It turned out the place I'd identified yesterday was only a 45 minute drive from Calais and, having had such an early start, it seemed a waste of the day not to travel a little further (although I'm not sure the logic works there, as the original destination looked to have touristic merit, rather than just being a night stop).
Arriving at the marina here just after 0930, Bertie was popped into a free spot overlooking the remarkably green water and over to the office we went to pay. The office was closed (contrary to the opening hours displayed), but as we were establishing that, along came another couple.
Weather: Foggy drive to Folkestone, but warm (19 degrees as we left Canterbury at 0430). Overcast with some rain as we drove through France, clearing to sunshine by mid-morning. 28 degree max.
Which fool decided that an 0548 Chunnel crossing was a good idea? Well, both of us really, and sufficiently recently that we remembered making the positive choice to suffer a 0400 alarm over the alternative of a late evening crossing that would see us arrive in France at midnight. A daytime crossing was off the table; even antisocially timed crossings are expensive enough at this time of year.
So, we were up at 0400, and having established last night that we couldn't pay for our entire stay in Canterbury until the clock had gone past midnight, I took a walk across the car park to the payment machine whilst Mick readied Bertie for travel. A pleasant surprise that the car park actually costs £4 per day, rather than £8 per night, so one night is £8 (i.e. two days) whereas two nights is only £12 (I'm sure we've stayed there for two nights before, so this shouldn't have come as a surprise).
The drive to Folkestone was unpleasant. The fog was dense in places and my night vision is terrible (I wasn't driving, but as a passenger I still like to see where the road is), but we got there and found the Chunnel busier than one might expect at that time of day. As we queued for each of the processes, all seemingly planned with inefficiency in mind, we pondered what it would be like if Disney World ran the Eurotunnel.
My activity whilst under the sea was to find a destination for today. It turned out the place I'd identified yesterday was only a 45 minute drive from Calais and, having had such an early start, it seemed a waste of the day not to travel a little further (although I'm not sure the logic works there, as the original destination looked to have touristic merit, rather than just being a night stop).
Arriving at the marina here just after 0930, Bertie was popped into a free spot overlooking the remarkably green water and over to the office we went to pay. The office was closed (contrary to the opening hours displayed), but as we were establishing that, along came another couple.
View from windscreen
Liz and Wayne are from New Zealand and are travelling in a van they bought in the UK and will, at the end of their trip, export to NZ to sell it there. They are interesting people, so our quick trip to the office turned into the best part of two hours of chatting, although I had to excuse myself at one point to make a pot of tea. They duly ribbed us about our Britishness.
In amongst all this, the lady from the office appeared and I demonstrated that whilst I can still understand French well enough, after four years of trying to learn Spanish, a lot of French had fallen out of my head. Verb conjugations were a particular problem. I could have expressed that I or we wanted to leave today, but at that point I was translating for Liz & Wayne and couldn't remember the conjugations for 'they'. The host deserved a medal for her perseverance in communicating with us.
After lunch the early start caught up with me, down came the bed and a brief nap was had, curtailed when Mick accidentally (or so he says!!) slammed a cupboard door.
It was mid-afternoon by the time we headed out to walk the 20 minutes into town. Fortunately a breeze had picked up, which made it feel much cooler - at least for the first ten minutes until the town streets cut off the air flow. It justified a stop at a shop on the way back for an ice cream.
Looking back to where Bertie is parked, from the nearby bridge
As for the town, I think this sorry-looking, abandoned Youth Centre set expectations at an appropriate level:
The most interesting bit of a visually uninteresting town:
Plenty of evidence of the same vast array of architectural styles, butted up against each other, as we've seen elsewhere in Belgium. The grey house is every bit as narrow as it looks:
Tomorrow we shall move on and see what else we can find on our way to our destination area.
Your comment on the architecture reminds me of your caustic opinion of the huge telephone exchange in Kendal opposite the bus station.
ReplyDeleteWas that me? I have no recollection of having been near the bus station in Kendal, nor of any building opposite, and a search of both blogs hasn't suggested that I've been there. That said, if the building to which you refer is the one I was looking at on StreetView just now, I can see that I might have been scathing about it!
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