Day tripping, Part One
Right, so, we did indeed go to Belgium. For those who have been on tenterhooks waiting to hear about our adventures I’m sorry this has been a while in coming. Not that anyone has been loitering around just to read this, but hey.
My alarm was set for the stupid time of four-thirty am and I woke up at four am. Which nice but also not. I didn’t panic about what I did and didn’t have to stuff into a bag as I’d already done all that the night before - I was brought up to panic the night before, and to pack an entire spare set of clothes, just in case. It turned out Moosh had done much the same thing, in terms of alarm setting and waking and bag organisation. And off we went…..to greet zombie’s along the way. Because they are the only people about on the roads at five am; no normal person would ever consider getting into a car to drive some place at that time of day. We made swift progress to Dover, with two stops, one at Reading t’other at Maidstone. On leaving the Maidstone services building entrance, Moosh was about to walk back to the car where she’d parked it in Reading, which would have meant a long wait beside the real car for me, and I would have never got to see lovely Bruges!
There were no problems with getting on the ferry and no problems whilst on the ferry. Unless you count sharing a hour and fifteen-ish Channel crossing with about four coach loads of first year/year seven, day-tripping school kids as troublesome, which I now do. Somehow, we’d managed to be one of the first vehicle’s off the ferry on the other side, which we got a little excited about, sad cows that we are. We positively zoomed off the ferry, once Moosh had restarted the car after stalling it and said goodbye to the surly French ferry personnel, and sped along that road, whatever it was called, out of Calais and onto Dunkerque. Kinda wished we hadn’t bothered now. The driving around Dunkerque to find the town centre, then to find somewhere to park took a lot longer then is good for a day trip, especially when you haven’t reached your intended destination yet.
For some reason Moosh followed an ambulance for a while, which took us, unsurprising, to the hospital, but not the city centre. But we got there eventually, I think. It’s hard to tell these days where a city centre is, everywhere is redeveloping the space they have to look like every other city centre. After some bizarre choices of turns and lane use we zipped into a multi story car park somewhere near the dock area. I say dock area cos that’s what it looked like, all redeveloped for the new holy gods of tourism and leisure. We soon discovered that our choice of free parking space was attached to a shopping complex. The reason we’d stopped in Dunkerque was to experience a proper French lunch. After a little tootling about in the sunshine and not being entirely sure of ourselves we plonked for a little café called erm, ah, I’ve no idea. Moosh might know though.
It was, now get this, very French. Oh yes! Now you weren’t expecting that. I had flashbacks to first year French - not understanding a sodding thing going on around me so instead I sit and say nothing and try and hide behind my book/desk. Which is pretty much what I did in this café but without the desk and only a very tiny table to perch at and a rather tiny but loud “Look At Me, I’m A Tourist!” book. I found no comfort contained within it, other than hiding form the obvious glares we were getting. Honestly, walking into to the place I could sense each and every one of the people sat outside were marking us as foreigners with no business doing there. I was, to say the least, out of my comfort zone. And cursing my lacking and mostly lost French knowledge.
The menu was a simple affair of mostly chips and/or ham. Once we’d (I lie and say we, cos it was Moosh who did all the ordering) negotiated two small beers, s’il vous plaît, we discussed the little menu. Moosh is a vegetarian, so she was trying to avoid the ham option. She tried to order the ham omelette without ham via not using the French word for without, instead it was a kinda of “Can I have the omelette but not with the ham” sorta thing. It didn’t work and she received a ham-smothered runny omelette. And I had ham and chips, with lots of mayo. French it was, impressive it wasn’t. Afterwards we tottered around in the baking sun briefly looking for a cash machine. Loaded with Euros we made a dash back to the car and out of this less than arresting place. No, we never got to see the beach or anything of historical importance, we had places to go.
We sped a little faster then the law would allow along that road some more. (I’ve no idea what the road is, but it’s dead easy to find on a map, so if you’re really curious or trying to avoid working, go seek.) After some time, we became aware that we might be getting nearer Bruges, the signs were saying so and the amount of traffic had increased significantly. But all around us was still very green; lots of trees as though you’re in a forest with a major road running through it. We kept following the signs for Bruges but somehow lost them and Bruges itself and found ourselves driving away from Bruges onto some other place that we didn’t want to go to. A few quick about turns and we discovered ourselves in the St. Peters area of the city. This was ok, we kinda knew where we were, we would’ve had an even better idea if we had a proper map not merely a really large all-of-Europe one and a teeny tourist-book version of Bruges. Before we knew it, we were being jiggled by cobbled roads and surrounded by old buildings, it seems we’d just stumbled upon it. Which is pretty much how the next parking space came to be, stumbled upon. If you drove too fast past the driveway for these very nice and discreet car parks you wouldn’t know you’ve just passed your opportunity to dump the car. But we had. So we did.
Cameras at the ready, we went and explored the rather lovely little place called Bruges. It’s so chilled out and relativity peaceful that when I pressed her, Moosh said that if she had to she’d definitely like to live there. So would I. We found ourselves at the entrance to St Salvatore’s Cathedral and after standing in the gardening sniffing the beautifully scented air and pondering what on earth that lovely smell was, we went in and had a mooch about. I for one am glad we did. It’s lot smaller then Gloucester Cathedral but it packs a punch in other areas. There are some traces of the original decoration on the stone work and the on walls hang large canvases of biblical scenes. Then I turned around and saw the largest organ I’ve seen in quite sometime. It was black, with gilted twiddly bits, and making a rather delicious sound. I do like a good bit of organ music. I did take some pictures but they’ve all came out rather crap - blurred and too dark. I’m disappointed and am gonna have to learn how to take decent pictures. The silver they had on display was quite tasty too, although none of my snaps do them any justice.
We meandered around, stopping in chocolate tourist traps, feeling cooled by the gentle breeze and soaking in the all round relaxed atmosphere. It definitely needs then a few hours to do it properly. I think camping something in Belgium and then spending an entire day there, riding around on a hired bike would do wonders for the soul, my soul anyway. All too soon it was time to leave, if we where to do some beer/wine warehouse shopping we had to get our skates on. But that’s a whole other story, one that Moosh may or may not tell.
She did. Here
