LT 13 July London
With the children having run out of sightseeing and
cemetery-visiting energy, we decided to spend a quiet and relaxing Thursday in
Belgium. After a morning at our cute
cottage doing some writing and crafts etc we took a drive over to Oostvleteren
to an animal park (sort of similar to Willowbank in Christchurch). It was a rather scenic drive on several
counts. The countryside in Flanders is
beautiful and green, lots of crops, quite flat (we’d love to come back and do
some cycling – and there are lots of bike tracks everywhere), and every couple
of km there is a small village, with brick houses and a huge church. In fact from almost any point in the countryside
you can look around you and see at least half a dozen church spires in the
distance from the villages nearby.
Additionally the Belgian roadworking crews have a fairly work-oriented
process which involves completely cutting off roads (even main roads, in fact
even main intersections – i.e. both roads - in the middle of a village) – with little
or no warning and no indication of a suitable detour. Several times we had to drive off in a random
direction for a few minutes until the GPS stopped telling us to ‘perform a
U-turn where possible’, and actually found us an alternate route. However we eventually arrived at the animal
park and even stopped at a small bakerij on the way for lunch.
The animal park was quite fun (quite overpriced as well –
the only thing in Belgium that was!)
They had all the usual farm animals, but in the later sections they had
otters, beavers , capybaras (funny looking square-jawed things), prairie dogs (?
our best guess translation of the dutch sign), meerkats, skunks, raccoons,
porcupines, foxes and several other unrecognisable but quite interesting animals. There were some very cute and curious little
monkey-type things, and a little dog-thing that had a tiny face and massive
pointy ears. Unfortunately we couldn’t
read any of the signs so we were at a bit of a loss about what we were looking
at. We were lucky enough to be at the otters at feeding time and when they saw
their dinner coming (in the form of stinky little fish being biffed over the
fence by a staff member) they stood up on their hind legs and made a sound a
lot like cats meowing. They were
actually very cute, but had big sharp teeth that stopped me putting my fingers
over the fence.
We then headed back to Ieper (Belgian spelling) to have a look
in the Flanders Fields museum shop, which we hadn’t been able to do the
previous day as we’d been shuffled out of the museum at closing time. After much thought and consideration we were
able to decide on our purchases then found an ice cream shop before heading
off. Katriel managed to spend the last
of her spending money allocation on ANOTHER soft toy – we’re going to need a new
bed for all the new friends she’s bringing home! We stopped at the supermarket again on the way
home to buy a few more bargain bits and pieces for another home-cooked meal
back at the cottage.
Today we did our penultimate pack! Not so efficient this time – a poor
performance at 2 ¼ hours, plus we then spent nearly half an hour talking to our
‘hostess’ before we finally left. We
were headed for the Eurotunnel at Calais, but made a detour through Morbecque
in France. In 1916 my grandpa was sent
to Gas School at Morbecque, about 40-odd km from the front line. The purpose of Gas School was to teach
soldiers about how to survive the poison gas attacks from the Germans –
protective gear etc. There didn’t seem to be any memorials in
Morbecque specifically , but there were several buildings including an old
church that Grandpa most likely saw when he was there - 96 years ago. It was difficult trying to imagine what it
must have been like for him. To have
seen and experienced, as just a teenager, unimaginable horrors at Gallipoli,
and then be sent, several years later to a town thousands of kilometres away to
learn how to protect himself from poison gas attacks from the enemy… how could
he even begin to make sense of such a world.
With all that we’ve read and seen about both wars in the last few weeks,
it’s incredible that the soldiers that survived were able to return to any kind
of normal life afterwards.
Because of our slow start we didn’t have time to linger in
Morbecque, but I was glad we had made the detour. We were then headed for the Eurotunnel with
some haste (I believe Peter may have suggested that a speeding ticket would be
cheaper than a new channel crossing ticket, but I couldn’t be sure). Actually once you get onto the motorways the
traffic travels along quite speedily anyway, so we were in good company.
Our channel crossing was with the Eurotunnel train, which is
an absolutely massive operation. There
are over 50 crossings per day, and you clear French and UK customs (including
explosives testing and a general chitchat with the customs guy) before you get
on the train. For all that it is
incredibly efficient and straightforward, and we had at least 7 minutes in the
terminal to buy a quick lunch and then board the train. The car carriages have two levels and you
basically drive in the end of the train and along the train as far forward as
you can, all but touching the car in front.
Each carriage (4 or 5 cars worth) is individually closed, rather than
having one long caterpillar. There is a
little footpath area on each side of the car and toilets at the front, and you
basically just sit in your car for half an hour while you zoom at 160km/hr to
England. I tried desperately to sleep in
order to avoid having to think about being in a tunnel under the sea, and was
partly successful. The train goes so
fast that you actually travel back in time, arriving in England 20 minutes
before you left France. The other funny
thing about the train is, when you drive off the front in England, you have to
drive on the left side of the road!
Luckily it feeds into a motorway where you can basically only go in one
direction for the first little while, while you get your head around it.
The English don’t care much to inform you how fast to drive –
the best we got was “Variable Speed Limit”.
And nothing further to indicate what might be causing it to vary, or
indeed what values it might vary between.
The other interesting sign on
the motorway was the rather ambiguous “picking up your litter costs road
workers’ lives”. Is it better to drop
litter or not?
The drive to London was about an hour and a half (perhaps
two including traffic and the toilet stops).
We arrived back at our friendly Travelodge in Teddington for the last
two nights of our trip! It’s quite
relaxing to be heading for a town that we know already, no need to figure out
where the shops/toilets/trains etc are. After
unpacking the car and blobbing in front of the TV for a little while, we
dragged ourselves out for a curry then to bed for an early (-ish) night.
Tomorrow we head for the Farnborough airshow – the very last
‘event’ on our holiday itinerary.
