London Calling

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.