Wednesday, left work and drove down to Bury St Edmunds. Met up with a colleague and then carried on driving down to Folkestone.
Here we shall have the first tale of (potential) woe. Trundling along the M25 and we hit the queue for the Dartford crossing with about two miles to go. The topic of conversation was cars and said colleague was commenting on his current one (the one we were sat in), a 318 Touring. He mentioned that in the past three weeks he’d had four punctures, and that it didn’t carry a spare, but instead had the spray stuff that inflates and seals the tyre. Now, and this is no exaggeration (well maybe a little), within seconds of him sharing this fact, there was a “bong” from the dashboard and a light lit up indicating a potential puncture. Note that I said “potential” woe, as this turned out to be a false alarm. (way too many potentials there)
Onwards we go, eventually arriving at a delightful Premier Inn near the Eurotunnel. I say delightful with a certain degree of misplaced sarcasm actually because as a place to sleep, it wasn’t that bad. The adjoining gastro-pub was a bit dire though. The speed at which they deliver your order is a fair measure at how much care and attention they have put into your food.
Up at 5am and head for the tunnel. I like this way of crossing to Europe very much. It’s quick, easy, cheap and involves very little queuing.
Colin (I’ll stop calling him colleague, as that sounds a bit rude) suggested grabbing something to eat early on, but I convinced him to wait until we were on the péage. Wise words indeed from Mr Brown, but not without a small amount of previous experience.
I give you the XL...
Colin had the XXL. Much like mine but with added sausage, beans and other things now forgotten.
On we go, eventually arriving at Bethune.
We got within about 2 Km (we are in France after all) of our destination and then all of a sudden the traffic ground to a halt. There's us thinking that the political protests had finished yesterday. No such luck. Why are they protesting? All to do with raising the pensionable age from 60 to 62. Wha? I mean WHA??? I can't fault them for there efforts but come on.... 62 isn't all that bad.
This bit in the middle of the day really isn't very interesting. Well... it is, but I'm not going to go into it on here. Suffice it to say that it involved driving round the French countryside looking at stuff.
Have a picture of some protesters instead...
Roll forward to about 2pm. Our host takes us for some lunch.
The French, as I'm sure you know, are fantastic eaters. As in quality, not quantity. They are also quite particular. Trying to find somewhere that served food after 2pm is quite difficult. But there was one place that our host (I know that I keep referring to him a such, but I'm not sure of the spelling of his name. I think it's something like Benoir) knew. I give you FLUNCH.
Right, let's make a comparison. I'm comparing an English "Gastro-Pub" from the night before, to an everyday "French Diner". In fact no, we can't make a comparison. It would be disrespectful to even compare the two. But yet.... at both places myself and Colin had sirloin steak. As discussed, the evening's came rather quickly and was flavourless and chewy. When we ordered in France, they took fresh steak from the fridge and cooked it on a griddle right in front of us. It. Was. Delicious.
Going on a bit too much now for one blog post, so going to wrap it up. After our 3pm lunch(!) we headed for home. Leave Bethune at about 3.30. Back in The Ham by about 9pm. Not too shabby.
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