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Full circle 3,700 miles.
All the dots joined up, time to go home. Last night we had our last bottle wine in France, we return today and look forward to seeing all our friends again but will miss Europe. Our blogs don’t always mention enough of the periods when we have had long days of reading, talking to fellow travellers, walking beaches and hillsides with Horace and just being totally relaxed without any mishaps! So we’ll miss it.
Since Germany we have stopped in southern Belgium and finally in St Omer, about 30 mins away from Dunkirk. Horace has been to the vet and had his pill (42 Euros for one pill, and a pat on the head from the vet! Nice work if you can get it.) so, we are all set.
On Monday we travelled through Belgium and pulled into a site on the coast near Ostend. It was a huge site with static vans as far as you could see. It had a very commercial feel about it. We were processed by people in a very posh reception area who didn’t look as if they’d ever spent a night in a tent or camper. We paid extra for this and extra for that and left
deposits for internet etc. We set up camp and I went to get water, 30 mins later still trying to find water and having been shrugged at by non caring staff we were fed up. Feeling that we were a bit of an inconvenience we decided to leave, it had been a long drive and we were both tired but the place was just not right. We were told that if we paid an extra 2E 50c we could have an upgraded pitch, one of the upgrades is that water is nearby!! Over commercialisation of camp sites can be a problem, when we eventually found that a token was required to get our water for the tank we thought we’d had enough. So we packed up to leave, we didn’t want our last stay in Europe to be a bad one. Of course the office had closed by the time we went to tell them we wanted a refund, they only work 9 – 5 which says it all really. After a while we managed to get our money back and leave but had to have a bit of a strop with the overnight security guard who was very fed
up with us.
An hour later we pulled into the site at St Omer, in the grounds of a lovely French chateaux with welcoming smiles from the couple who ran the site and we knew we’d done the right thing. We gave each other high fives, set up camp quickly and were soon sitting chatting to some other campers feeling we were where we belonged again.
This site is used a lot by British as it is near to the ports and tunnel. As we have talked over the last few days to those, like us, who are returning and those who are just starting their trips we have wondered if there are any retired people left in the UK. So our last few nights have been very pleasurable.
We have enjoyed putting our thoughts on the blog, Dee has always kept a journal of our travels and it has always been good to reflect back every few days on what has happened. We have done it for our own benefit really but we have seen that sometimes the blogs have had 40 or 50 views! We know of a couple
of folk who have left comments or e-mailed us but that only amounts to 4 or 5 people. It could be that someone has just been constantly clicking onto it to make us feel popular! Anyway, if you can let us know who you are that would be great. We started keeping a blog when we were backpacking in Thailand two years ago and we have found that it’s still there -
http://deegeev.blogspot.fr/ if anyone’s interested.
So we are planning our next trip as we travel back, anyone want to rent a house in Old Walcot for a year?
Gee and Dee.
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Sarah Woolhead
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Hi Dee and Gee I have been following you blog most days when you have made an entry. Sounds as if you have had a FAb time. Look foward to seeing yoyu at singing. Love sarah xx