Gravelines France via Turnhout Belgium.

May 15th 2023

We stopped last night in a small aire along side the canal in Turnhout Belgium where the road bridge has to be raised to allow the boats through. We stayed here last year and as it is free and convenient for our journey we returned again.

This morning we started the day with a trip to the local Decathlon, sadly I wasn’t too impressed with their range of clothes for men and made do buying 2 T shirts. We had all day to get to Gravelines it was beautifully sunny so we decided to drive across Belgium without using the motorways, we allowed the sat nav to guide us without interference and we saw some lovely countryside villages and architecture. However we began to doubt our wisdom when it took us through the centre of Antwerp. It may have worked well if there hadn’t been major road works in the city with main roads being closed, the sat nav alternate route left a little to be desired. We ended up in narrow cobbled back streets just large enough for us to squeeze down, at one point having to mount the footpath to avoid a tram coming the other way and having to ignore it completely when it wanted us to go down a pedestrianised street 😵‍💫😖 With a combination of us ignoring it at times following road signs etc we eventually descended into a tunnel and out of Antwerp.

We settled down again to our trip realising we had forgotten what terrible road surfaces they have, the crashing does rather shatter the nerves. We eventually stopped at a supermarket where I did a little shopping and we had lunch whilst parked in the car park. Again we headed off and the sat nav took us to Brugge, I recognised the road as where we had been a few years ago with Alison and Peter and then when it turned us off the main road and headed south we knew it was time to switch it off, as you can see on the next map we did a complete circle, headed north joined the motorway to get here to Gravelines.

I think this the fourth time we have stayed here at this pretty spot so very little to add, it’s close to Calais and tomorrow sees us return to the UK.