Tuesday 27th June 2017

Ann was up comparatively early this morning and saw these geese in the fort moat right by our parking place

These two were just outside our van.

We stopped off to buy diesel soon after leaving the fort before taking to the motorways. We passed Antwerp, Ghent and Brugge before finally crossing over from Belgium into France. We parked in the town of Gravellines and got our bikes out. Here's the lighthouse.

We rode along past the beach huts - the weather was very warm.

We also cycled along the river frontage which is lined with flowers.

Gravellines is quite a nice little town.

We stopped for the day at the DFDS ferry terminal west of Dunkerque. The posh A class van next to ours belongs to a couple from the Netherlands who are about to visit Britain for the first time. I tried to talk them out of it citing how ridiculously expensive everything is, that you have to drive on the left, that distances and speeds are measured in miles and miles per hour and that about half the population are brainless euro-phobic idiots. I'm not sure I convinced them to cancel their ferry booking!.

Things have changed a lot here since we last visited. There is a brand new terminal building and check in plaza.

There is also a proliferation of razor wire topped anti migrant fencing. While in the rest of western Europe you can move freely across borders without even having to slow down, Britain's government has decided to retreat from civilisation behind these "defences".

There are quite a lot of vans here this evening. Mostly German registered.

Many thanks to Osen Fjordcamping for being the first to comment of this journey's blog. We visited you on 22nd May and you were kind enough to let us empty our toilet cassette and fill our fresh water tank without charge. Many thanks for following our journey. We have the stickers you gave us on the windowsill next to our table to remind us of your kindness.

Today we traveled 148 miles (238 kilometres). We are at N51.01571 E2.19781