Day 20 - Homeward Bound

Friday 18th September 2015

One day I will find a nice rural route from Luxembourg across Belgium and northern France to the channel ports. The motorway route is pretty awful, but it is a long ride and at the end of the tour my thoughts are turned towards home and I just want to get it over with.

 To be fair the first section up the A4 is okay but then comes the boring Belgian motorway with its potholes and broken tarmac, clogged with huge lorries from all over Eastern Europe, and its featureless urbanised landscapes.

 The skies are grey and threatening and the weather has turned cold. It is with relief that we finally turn off the highway for the last few miles through the villages of the Pas de Calais to Les Ballastieres.

 This is an old farm house run by Sue and Paul from England as a bed and breakfast establishment. They have a bunkhouse upstairs in the old barn with a recreation room underneath equipped with cooking facilities, tv/DVD player and various games and pastimes.
In the courtyard at Les Ballastieres

Hosts Sue and Paul
There is a gang of bikers from Wales staying tonight and we join them in the barn to watch an international rugby game and chew the fat. I book passage on the eurotunnel for the morning. It is an hour or so away to the north and we will be travelling around 10am.
Watching the rugby in the barn

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