France at last

France at last!

Leaving Ypres on a Sunday, we made a dash for the supermarket before midday closing time and managed a whopping 14km by lunch. Unfortunately only 4 of these were in the right direction and we passed the same supermarket and a few other familiar landmarks before finally making our exit proper. At this point we realised that P2's high school compass was a bit dodgy and resolved to find a better one.

We stopped for afternon tea in a rather unsalubrious bus-shelter where I grew amazed at how some drivers can identify females at distance on the footpath and react quickly enough to beep, yell, stick their heads out and make lewd gestures all whilst travelling at high speed.

It was also there that I decided that the saying "the best thing since sliced bread" had lost it's meaning for me. I'd grown to hate the stuff and hoped never to eat it again once we got to France.

I didn't suffer long as a few hours later we'd be there. Another disappointing border crossing with even less signage to indicate the auspicious occasion than the last. Ever since we'd arrived by boat to the Netherlands and had our passports stamped with a picture of a boat I've been dying to see what one receives when crossing by bicycle. I was devastated to learn later that no matter how you travel on the road, whether by car, on foot or by bike, you'll always get a car stamp on your passport.

But here we were at last! French roadsigns, french ads, french lack of bicycle paths and not five minutes into the country we encountered our first french hill. What a killer it was too, comparable to the wrong turn we took on a test ride in London which made
P2 feel faint and gave me the feeling I was about to puke. This time, even though we were more fit, we gave in part way up and pushed our loaded bicycles to the top and enjoyed the long gentle roll back down.

There was hardly anyone about in the small town of Bondue. Even the owners of the campsite, Mr & Mme Leper, were nowhere to be seen but we settled in anyway and decided to look for them later. It was like camping in someone's very large, very green and slightly overgrown backyard. The facilities were quite basic but it had a few quaint little caravans, each with a mini garden around it adding to it's unique character.

Eventually the owners returned and P2 settled our account in the local tongue whilst I tried my best to follow the conversation, nodding meaningfully. I was awfully proud of myself for managing two words.
"Can we...?" I started, waving a handful of travel brochures to imply the rest of the sentence.
"Of course! That's what they're for..." and I couldn't catch the rest but I convinced myself she hadn't a clue that I wasn't fluent.

During our recent travels we'd encountered, I thought, every variety of shower limiting system known to humankind. All but gone were the meek requests to limit one's time. Even in the most ancient plumbing systems there was now some kind of push button, 10sec spurt device or carefully rationed token operated systems which could cut off suddenly in the middle of your daydreaming, leaving you soapy and shivering. At chez Leper we really thought they'd taken it a bit far as they'd combined both the timer and the push button system. Fearing the worst we thought it best to maximise our time and shower together but ended up with a token to spare. What troopers!