Advertisement
We set off in the sunshine after a reasonable last night in the Premiere Classe hotel. These budget hotels have been quite good for the type of journey we were doing but their WiFi connection was so bad, we had to resort to uploading the photos for the blog via the mobile phone connection a few times.
The route from Troyes was almost due north for a good stretch and we were expecting to drive through heavy rain for most of the day, given the weather forecasts we had seen. In actual fact, the roads were dry and clear and we made good progress, stopping near Reims for the first refreshment break.
We also needed fuel for the last time in France and resorted to motorway service station prices for the first time this trip. We also stopped for a coffee and cake in the bakery next door just as a coach load of Spaniards arrived. We were glad we had our order already as they mobbed the bakery counter. They must have been on that coach for a while.
From then it was a fairly easy stretch of motorway up to and around Cambrai where we took
a few different intersections to get onto the road heading East towards Brussels. As we turned East, the road got steadily more busy and the weather deteriorated so that we were now driving in pouring rain with traffic all around. I this might have been the most traffic we had seen on the whole trip.
We outran a huge black cloud that was speeding East to try to get a dry rest stop near Valenciennes but just as we stopped to eat our sandwiches, the cloud caught up so we had to retreat into the car. The service station seemed to be a rest stop for a group of other Porsche 911s and when we headed back out onto the road, they all followed so we travelled in an impromptu convoy for a good few kilometres.
In fact, we followed them all the way into Belgium, passing the border with little fanfare apart from a small sign indicating that we had crossed into “Belgique”. The one noticeable difference between the privately-run French motorways and the Belgian side was the size of the potholes. Bob was driving now and it was a constant game of swerving to avoid the
deepest and wincing when we were obliged to ride over one. The suspension was not made for this type of surface so we were glad there were only about 80km to go.
The rest of our Porsche cavalcade turned off to Liege at the point where the motorway split leaving us to continue on alone to Brussels. Bob continued to weave around the potholes much to the annoyance of some of the other drivers but it saved our poor backs from being juddered to jelly.
We tracked around Brussels outer ring road and then saw the signs for Watermael-Boitsfort where Tom, Marta, William and Hannah live and where we planned to stay the night. Off the ring road, the surface got even worse and Bob realised how different the Porsche suspension was compared the Skoda Octavia he was used to driving around these roads. We were rattled and juddered all the way along finishing up on Belgian cobbles just before the house. Thankfully, this section was short and we parked up and quickly dashed in to see everyone as the heavens opened again.
We had noisy welcome from the kids and Bob immediately spotted his first DIY
job as the doorbell nearly came off the front door. We then caught up with everyone, including Dinah who was visiting and had a cup of tea before Bob and Tom launched straight into repairing the sofa arm which also needed some attention.
We are both looking forward to the rest day we have tomorrow with no driving. There was always a spare day in our schedule in case we needed longer to get between destinations or wanted to extend our stay somewhere. We hadn’t used it though so it meant a day off with the family in Brussels.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.14s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 14; qc: 57; dbt: 0.1002s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Lucy
non-member comment
made it!
Well done, you made it all in one piece, looked a great trip. Hugs to all the Brussels Jayes and catch up soon.