My first proper night's sleep in a tent on this trip was light, and broken. But long, and in the morning accompanied by 2 hours of very pleasant dozing. At 10, I decided it was time to get up, and make something of the day. But I didn't realise the amount of packing that was to be done.
Nothing was to be done before I'd had my first coffee brewed on my new Dragonfly stove. It was heaven, sat down, reading my book, sorting out my route for the day, drinking a lovely coffee. Of course this was the last time it was possible, as at the other campsites, there were no chairs to be borrowed. But it would be replicated in a horizontal position.
Now was another essential task for the day. My morning 'consitutional'. Unfortunately, amongst other things I had forgotten to get the previous day (including olive oil), I had neglected to get toilet paper, assuming that all toilets would have some. Now, a tip for anyone camping in France in the future: they don't. Not ever! I used the little cardboard bit from the inside of the toilet roll, and had a thorough shower.
Everything packed away well, the tent a dream to put up and down, long hours of research well spent. Thus I went off, weighed down, but with good weather, and a generally good route to follow.
Coming down one hill was an incident that shocked me into not repeating. I was descending at a goodly rate, 50kph, and decided to itch my nose. Bad idea! With only one hand steering, and so much weight on the back wheel, I swerved very badly, and recovered 30 metres up the road, cold sweat and all. Sorry Ben and Jo, no side-saddle no-handies for me this trip.
Coming into Saint-Omer, I saw a MaccyDees just opposite on the roundabout, and went in for a good meal. The situation was oddly familiar, I was sure I'd been here before in the way home from Jard-sur-mer on a previous holiday. But having only covered 25km at this point, I had to get on.
Again I took a wrong turning, this time ending up on a motorway, which I'm sure I wasn't allowed on. So I took the first turning off, and went through town, a round-trip costing me 8km, but safely.
Coming up to 5:00, I knew I needed to set up camp for the day, but wasn't going to make my destination of Béthune, so I went to the nearest campsite, in Rebecques. Having covered 60km, I thought my day was over. Not so!
This campsite was by far the hardest to find. 1 hour of searching, with a nice french lady showing me the way in her car, with me following on a bike, and a further 30 mins spent searching around the back of a lake, and a wierd walk through a forest, and only then did I get to the campsite.
Even then it was strange, the reception deserted, I seemed to be the only customer they had and the owners going out for the night. Their teenage daughter had to interpret for me, using her school-learnt french. I didn't have a jeton for the showers, so I had to have a flannel wash, and the pasta and pesto dinner that night was disgusting (probably because I used hazelnut oil, instead of the olive variety). But again, I went to bed happy. 65km covered, in 3 and a half hours.
