European Holiday 2023

Well, that’s the last Nutella waffle, the last ice-cream,the last bike ride (and so on) of the holiday after four weeks of traveling. For our last stop, we’ve had three nights just outside Dunkirk, barely a stone’s throw from our last stop at Bruges. We’ve had a couple of bike rides to Dunkirk and along the sea front at Malo-les-Bains, epicenter of the Operation Dynamo evacuation in 1940. The museum was well worth a visit, but other than that it’s been a bit disappointing given the historical significance of the place.  Otherwise, it’s been a fairly chilled and  lazy 3 days with lots of sleeping and reading. Tomorrow we have a ferry from Calais, just an hour away and get back to Dover just after 11am, ready for the drive home. Final thoughts, reflections and bits of useless information, in no particular order. We’ve cycled about 320 miles and driven about 2000 miles, visited seven countries and stayed at 11 different locations. We’ve had one minor bike ...

Our journey to a campsite just outside Bruges was uneventful until we stopped at a supermarket to restock with food. As we set off on the last mile of our journey the amber light for check engine again came on. We were hopeful that overnight it would resolve itself as it did last time however the next morning it was still there. After a conversation with our breakdown cover provider, we set off on a   morning sightseeing   trip, not as originally intended the historic walking tour of Bruges but   to two garages neither of which had capacity to run a diagnostic test but both said just carry on as long it is amber but stop if goes to red. We were back in time for a nice cycle ride that afternoon from the campsite into Bruges mainly along a canal towpath and our return journey through a forest. We spent a couple of hours wandering around this beautiful city with lovely scenic views everywhere you looked. I can’t believe I h...