At the end of August, starting on the bank holiday Saturday,
my mum and I decided to do a mini tour around Belgium and France after
being forced to scrap our planned trip to Germany to do the Fairytale
Route due to my illness at the start of July and my
strength still not quite being 100%. This is a tour diary for the
trip!
This was only my 2nd time abroad riding my own bike but the first
trip of having to ride on the wrong side of the road (the last trip was
in Ireland). We had three planned days off the bike to use as rest days
and the main aim during the planning stage
was to end on the beach as that's what you always seem to miss when you
go on a bike tour. So, without further ado....
Saturday 27th August
Our first day was always going to be a long one with 200 odd miles
to cover to get from home to Folkestone for the tunnel so it was a nice
and early 6am start for us so we could be on the road for 7:30. As someone who likes their sleep and had only had
6 hours sleep the night before, you can probably guess I was less than pleased with this get up time!
In the morning, we made good time, probably because nobody wants to be on the road that early on a Saturday
morning for no good reason. We'd just started riding on the A14 and
were near Stanstead when it started to bucket it down. It felt like
hailstones
but we rode along for 5 minutes or so thinking it was just going to be a
shower as we'd passed through a couple of spots earlier on.
We then assumed it probably wasn't going to stop anytime soon as it
all looked pretty grey and gloomy and so we pulled off to put the rain
covers on our seat bags and I also out on my waterproof trousers as I'm
wearing my leather trousers on this trip.
Now, we'd stopped on a slight slope with the bikes facing downhill and
when I tried to get back on my bike, I couldn't seem to be able to get
my leg up to the seat to slide on at first and had to get my mum to help
me balance. Not ideal but oh well! We then
got back on track and were happily riding along even if it was slightly
damp and then bam... Blue skies everywhere and a very fast drying road.
Typical.
Our first proper stop (I'm not counting the faff with the rain
covers) was at about 10 at the Birchanger Green with 110 miles under our
belts and only 90 more until the tunnel. We bought some sandwiches
whilst we were there to eat on the train.
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| Parked up at Birchanger Green |
After arriving at the tunnel about 2 hours later,
we managed to get on to train leaving 2 hours before the one we'd
booked for... I got up at 6 for nothing?! Not particularly impressed but
it did mean we'd get to Brugge earlier than we thought which was
good.
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| Waiting to board, my seat bag made a great back rest |
 |
| ...and now the trip begins! |
Calais to Brugge along with the last 75 miles passed by pretty
uneventfully apart from the fact it was about 30 degrees with no breeze
so we did have to stop for a water break on the way. Being silly and
from England, mum and I both still had the liners
in our jackets so it was no wonder we felt like we were slowly
melting.
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| Stopped to remove the linings of our jackets and have some much needed water |
 |
| Still in good spirits despite slowly melting |
After getting sorted at the hotel and before I could fall asleep,
we headed into the city centre and had some dinner, a wander and a
waffle before heading back to the hotel at 9:15 and completely crashing. On to Maubeuge tomorrow via Ghent.
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| The fountain outside our hotel |
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| Burning off our dinner |
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| ....and putting it all back on again with a waffle |
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| The chocolate shops here are incredible |
Total miles done: 278.
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