After a great sleep, yes, a much cooler night and the sky was blue in the morning.
Our destination today is Strasburg 500k’s away, just inside the French border. It’s a slightly north- west trajectory, before dropping south-west, approx 100k’s short of Strasburg.
That was the plan but we were not enjoying the German motorways, To their credit there are no tolls, but Poki does not fit well with the three traffic lanes. Slightly too fast for the truck lane but too slow for the middle lane. What’s more, we see nothing of the countryside. It’s not enjoyable. Ferrari’s and Mercedes scream past in the outside lane at insane speeds. I hate to think of the carnage if a car in the middle lane wanders wide without looking in the rear vision mirror.
We decide to exit early, and head for Metz, a French city just inside the border. By around 2pm and escaping the motorways we shopped in a Lidl supermarket, then within a couple of kilometres we are in France, though you wouldn’t know it as it was obviously once-upon-a-time, part of Germany as the names remain very Germanic. It’s clearly France though and it’s a delight to be back. We immediately reprogrammed the sat-nav, to avoid motorways.
Motoring is joyful again. The countryside reflects an agricultural industry, and the smells with it.
Small towns. Country lanes. Jen has found a camp site for the night with 100k’s to go.
Some roadside assistance.
On a narrow road there is a set of temporary traffic lights. The road is under repair and a one way system is in place. Just as we arrived at the set of lights, they changed to red. Some mature motorcyclists were congregating just past the lights and one of them wandered back to us, asking if we could help them. One of the bikes, a lovely late model BMW Adventure bike, would not start, and they wondered if we had jumper leads.
Yes we have jumper leads and I got them out from a box on the roof. Trouble is, they could not lift the petrol tank to access the battery. I noticed a connection box that would connect to our battery charger, so got that out and connected it to the inverter. Within a few minutes there was enough charge in the battery to start it. I suspect they will need to replace the battery?
We are in canal country and there are pleasure boats making use of the facilities. Pictured, one of the locks but no boats.
Much better than busy motorways.
There is a line of cars with caravans at the entrance to the camp site!! Europe and particularly, Holland is on the move. It’s a big camp and by 6pm is packed.
On one side of us a French couple in their late 50’s were pitching a tent. They have cycled from the French alps. Interested in our vehicle they showed us a photo of the wife’s sister’s daughter, who have an expedition rigged Defender and they are currently exploring Morocco.
Pulling up beside us, an impressive new looking Toyota Land Cruiser. The owners are Dutch and we got chatting with them. Their daughter earlier this year, returned from an extensive visit to Australia and New Zealand. They flew to meet with her in Australia.
Tomorrow we head towards Calais. It’s just over 400k’s but we will dawdle along tomorrow and look to cross back to Blighty on Monday?
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