7am came and went…we had done it! We are invincible! Even our fridge decided to work today, the lazy pile of junk. Life is good. Through the binoculars, I caught a glimpse of England. Tomorrow, we sail, to paraphrase that singing sedative, Roger Whittaker.
But before we can welcome the dawn of our departure, we had to find a final place to lay up for a nights (hopefully) undisturbed rest. Miki pinpointed a spot near the ominously named Gravelines, and we headed for it. Our journey took us further along the coast and gave us a chance to visit the peculiarly named “Cap de Gris Nez”, literally Cape of the Grey Nose…perhaps some kind of giant handkerchief?
The Cap was beautiful and windswept, not necessarily in that order, and under a little duress, Miki persuaded me to walk the cliffs and paths down to the beach. However, the find of the day was “Batterie Todt” an impressive concrete gun bunker that used to form part of Germany’s Atlantic Wall defences for their famously postponed British Invasion. 
It had been turned into a fabulous war museum by an enterprising chap called David Davies, owner of the local Normandy Hotel and known in some circles as “The Taffy Frog”, for obvious reasons. The collection housed within this imposing edifice conjured up an era long gone, and the sight of the bunks, mess kits and mannequins in Wehrmacht uniforms caused a chill to run down the spine. Household names like Krupp and BMW were everywhere, makers of mayhem fifty years ago, economic behemoths today.
Curiously, we found a sign stating that the railway track for the giant gun outside had been manufactured in Tarbes, Miki’s French home town. One can only hope the workers didn’t know the use to which their handiwork was put.
Propaganda posters, trying to turn the French against the English and the English against themselves brought home the insidiousness of the failed Austrian painter’s regime.
But the hand painted poster of three allied troops, French, British and American, surging forward, flags proudly flying, said it all with its caption:
“ON LES AURA!”………….”WE WILL GET THEM!”
We arrived in Gravelines , a nice little town with a quiet estuary providing a home to a host of small boats. A series of small bridges criss-crossed the town, giving it a Venice kind of feel. We found a great spot for the Boomobile, several other motorhomes had parked down by the harbour in a lovely location, but we couldn’t find the service point, so it obviously wasn’t the real spot, but we resolved to return if we couldn’t find the one marked in the guide.
Some time later we found what we were looking for, but the site the service point was attached to looked like it provided half the audience and participants for Jerry Springer, so we decided to do our tanks, and then return to the Harbour idyll we’d found earlier. We pulled into the bay reserved for motorhome service. A strange orange coloured metal machine confronted us, and after some minutes we realised it needed to eat three fifty cent pieces in order to provide fifteen minutes of everything. By that I mean, a door would open and we could a) empty our toilet b) fill our fresh water c) have some mains electricity. But only for fifteen minutes. This was going to be a formula one pit stop kind of thing, so I prepared everything, opened the waste water tanks, set the fridge to mains, got the toilet cassette out ready, put the hose in the water tank, connected the mains lead up, then told Miki to insert the coins…Bam! I was off, running round like a lunatic, throwing unmentionable waste like a dervish down the chute provided behind the previously locked door, getting soaked by a spastic water pipe that insisted on giving me water before my hose was connected, it was organised chaos. As soon as the water was replenished I whipped the hose out and began washing the flies off the front of the Boomobile (it hadn’t been debugged since Spain, and was starting to look like something from Alien) I laughed with maniacal glee as I got this EXTRA service from the confounded machine. Following the debugging, I had a twinge of eco-conscience, and used the hose to direct some of my wayward “grey water” down the appropriate drain, meanwhile the fridge was enjoying a brief respite of “real power”
In my zeal to empty the toilet cassette in record time, I nearly got it wedged in the chute provided, but thankfully was spared any blushes when it suddenly came free and the cleaning hose retracted with a SNAP like some kind of manic reverse-stroke King Cobra. I slammed the door on this three-fold mechanised hell, disconnected, and made for the tranquillity of the harbour, secure in the knowledge that I had certainly got my 1.50 euros worth. Now I needed a lie down. A lovely quiet night was in order, and we relocated back at Gravelines harbour and got just that.
Text by Kev Moore
Drawing & Photos by Miki
Both on Planet Goodaboom
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