After our lovely quiet night by the harbour in Gravelines, subject of more than one 19th Century painting, we travel the last few kilometres up the coast, and as I write this, we are sat waiting in the terminal at Dunkirk, (or more precisely, the wonderfully named Loon Plage, which I assume means lunatic beach, or perhaps it’s shaped like a particular style of 1970’s trouser) hoping to get the earlier ferry at 10pm, but, with a cup of coffee, and feet up with a book, we’re content to watch the world go by until we’re called at midnight to cross the channel.
We keep ourselves amused making up stories about the exceedingly strange troupe of young east-european (probably polish) men and women in battle fatigues, driving military style 4x4’s exercising a pack of husky-type dogs in the car park. It is a quite disturbing sight, and looks for all the world like a not-so-covert invasion of either a) the ferry or, and infinitely more ambitious, (given that the English like dogs) b) Britain. Putting such national security issues to one side, It transpires that luck is with us, and we are allowed to join the queue for the 10 o’clock sailing. So it’s Au revoir France, Hello England.
Kev Moore, Dunkirk, 25/07/07
Full of anticipation, we scampered up onto the passenger decks of the ferry and were assaulted by a plethora of plasma screens all carrying BBC News 24. Now, remember, we’d been insulated almost since leaving Albir, from the world at large, we were ignorant of news events, until we boarded that ferry. We were brought up to date in a cruel fashion. The screens were showing some kind of third world flooding disaster. Sadly the “third world” in question turned out to be Oxford, our first planned destination. They went on to report that people had died, and in Tewkesbury, they had run out of fresh water. It had taken several days of rain to do what the Luftwaffe failed to do, bring England to its knees. I was incredulous. Which is French for “pissed off.”
We hit the ground running in Dover, aiming to get west of London that night, thereby avoiding terminal torpor on the M25 the next morning. The M25 is less of a four lane super ring road, and more of a circular car park, especially at 9am, so I spared Miki that experience and we headed onwards, with a brief stop at Clackett Lane Services where we were immediately exposed to the difference in treatment of motorhomes in France and England. It would have cost us £10 to stay in the car park for the night. No thanks. We saluted some brave, or possibly ignorant Dutch motorhomes who had parked up, ticket free regardless, but I felt sure they would be feeling the long arm of the bottom of the food chain “security guard” by morning.
We finally came to rest just before Beaconsfield, off Junction 2 of the M40, in an enormous elongated lay-by, full of trucks. We tucked in at the end and proceeded to enjoy an interesting night rolling from side to side as a variety of heavy goods vehicles assaulted us with their slipstreams. What joy.
To paraphrase Robert Browning; “Oh! To be in England, now the traffic’s here!”
Text by Kev Moore
Drawing & Photos by Miki
Both on Planet Goodaboom
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