| Calais to Lille |
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| Eurotunnel let us down again this year! Having taken our booking which included free parking at their Admin Centre, they decided to move their office which meant that parking could now only be offered for our two cars at commercial rates in the nearby public car park. This was going to add another �60 to our cost of getting across the channel. Not so much between 6 people, but hardly good PR to offer free parking and then take it away! |
| As he has done on many previous occasions, Norman, the Cycleservice driver, came to the rescue. He arranged for us to park at the site of the company that operated the bus and trailer service for Eurotunnel. All we would have to pay was a nominal �10 per car to cover for insurance while parked on their site. Nice one Norman! |
| So an extra early morning start it was to be. We arrived at the site at 7.15 a.m. and, after loading up our bikes on the trailer. we left to catch the 9.00 am crossing. Then it was on our bikes to cycle along the canal route to Cocove. The picture on the right gives the game away - how could we pass Cocove without calling in for an inaugural lunch? Impossible! |
| Nothing like a good lunch to get the trip started and Cocove never fails to satisfy in this department. Well fed and watered (well, not exactly watered...), we saddled up again to proceed to Audruicq station, 15 minutes ride away, where we would catch the train to Lille. It would have been nice to cycle to Lille, but this would have meant another day away - and this just wasn't available to take this year. |
| All in all , the morning had gone well. The weather had been kind - no sign of rain so far, in fact it had been surprisingly sunny. The roads of northern France were as ever, excellent. Little signs of other traffic and road surfaces that put the ones in the UK to shame. A little bit of poor map-reading on my part did see us going across a field very close to the canal's edge (it sure looked like a well-surfaced 'D' road on the map), but other than that it had been plain cycling! |