6. Jul, 2016

5. Jul, 2016

TUESDAY 05-07-16

Well, the great day had come. The day we leave Der Farderland. Once again not a smile or acknowledgement on the way to the shower block, or anywhere else on site for that matter. I don't think it's because these people are bad losers, I just think it's the way they are.

Scrubbed up we made the vehicle ready for the road. I dumped all waste water, emptied the loo, and half filled the fresh water tank, my thinking being that if the campsite at Ghent couldn't accommodate us for a couple of nights we would have to spend the night on a TruckStop contemplating yet another 'Plan B'.

Off we went, trusting in the Satnav, a foolish thing to do on so many previous occasions, but I had used a highlight pen on the road map to mark the route I wanted to take which avoided the notorious ring road around Brussels. What The Chef had to do was constantly monitor what 'It' was telling us, verses what I wanted 'It' to do. Our route from Remagen to Ghent was to be via Cologne, Aachan, Liege, Maastricht and Antwerp, all on motorways which passed said locations rather than through the cities, which from time to time 'It' likes to do. We agreed the route with 'It' all of the way except when it tried to take us via the Brussels ring road. Having ignored the predictable scolding's from 'It'  we settled down to the revised route.

It was all fairly straightforward, although the ring road around Antwerp was a trifle busy, a bit like the A14 between Cambridge and Huntingdon.

I gave a yelp of delight as we passed in to Belgium from Der Farderland. I don't know why, we know nothing about Belgium, other than that they make very nice chocolates, and we love Ypres.

Eventually we arrived at Camping Groeneveld (GPS: N51.005030 E3.572438) a campsite gleaned from the Caravan Club's book of European campsites, there being no ACSI discount sites anywhere in the area. Now the truth is neither of us has any idea where the hell we are, only that we are six miles out of Ghent. The CC campsite book quotes €23 per night (2013) today we paid €58 for two nights. We'll be informing the Caravan Club of the new rate together with the fact that there is a very noisy teenagers club of some sort next door who have been playing loud music all afternoon. That fact didn't appear in somebody's easily-pleased review of the site.

At the last minute we decided to have a barbecue this evening, based on the theory that if we're unlucky with campsites for the rest of the week we won't be in a position to have another one. We were joined by a family of ducklings with mum. Oh how close we were to having fresh roasted duckling.

The music next door eventually ended and I felt hopeful. We enjoyed our barbecue of sausages, burgers, chips (we'd only bought a frozen bag of them yesterday to fill the vacant space in the freezer) and salad, washed down of course, with liquid grapes, only this time The Chef didn't abstain.

Then the noise next door picked up again. I popped over to the campsite Reception to make enquiries about the club.  They have a large contraption which looks as if a large steel cage is winched in to the air and then what? It seems that they are nothing to do with the campsite. It's some kind of archery club.  So I told the manager, who was very apologetic, that he should pop next door and tell them to select their noisiest individual of the evening and tomorrow morning put them in the cage and hoist them in to the air. I will then take a bow and arrow and aim upwards. I have a feeling that my sentiments, if passed on, will be lost in translation.

I do try to be a good European, but sometimes I fail miserably.

Tomorrow we will attempt to catch a bus in to Ghent from wherever we are, though we'll need to find that out before we leave here, otherwise we won't know where we need to get back to.

So there we have it, a nothing day really, only that ve haff escaped Der Farderland vissout digging za tunnel.

5. Jul, 2016

5. Jul, 2016