Schoorbakkehoeve to Gravelines: Thursday 20 July 2017
Today we entered France and, boy, had we been spoilt by Belgium!
Ubiquitous cycle lanes and easy riding gave way to:
- ubiquitous cars speeding past us on a narrow dual-laned highway.
- a fierce headwind that seemed determined to blow us back to where we came. All day!
- navigating around, to, through or past, Dunkerque: a puzzle set to ‘Sherlock’ setting; though maybe that’s a wrong metaphor as there appeared no logic on display to unschooled outsiders.
- the multinational cemetery standing sombre testament to life and the living world we share.
- the town we went through that didn’t have wi-fi!?!
- the town with the ominous-sounding name, ‘Gravelines’ – we’re on our way to a funeral! – which, after much cold (dis)functionality, warms the heart with its more quaintly feel of a community evolved naturally rather than conceived to serve an industry.
- the next day waking up, where I noticed that when I enter another country during the day, I feel a certain sense of displacement or dislocation, but upon waking up there, I’m immediately at home … for a short while only, as in one short ride and a ferry skip across the sea, we’ll be in England – and home.
And what a welcome it was!
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Tracing Horizons 