June 8: On to Brugge

We are not that sad to see the back of the Aire de Tetegham. The aire de repose is designed as a safe place for drivers to park for the night. Often with a few basic amenities. This one is completely run down. The toilets are locked and after the girls are asleep we discover there are rats running around outside.  We do brave the night but quickly head for the nearest town of Dunkirque to find the information centre to try and sort ourselves a little for our time here.  We are yet to sort our SIM card and internet connection.

It's a lovely day and we walk through the town before deciding to head for the beach. It is from here that allied troups were evacuated after the war ended. We abandon that plan when we realise the rest of the city appear to have the same idea. Instead we drive 15 mins out of town to another beach area at Bray Dunes and have a lovely couple of hours. The water is warm.

We pack up and head for Ypres, Belgium on our way north. We arrive to find the flanders field museum is closing and we find it difficult to find our way to any points of significance by way of WWI history. All the same, the town centre has some lovely buildings, many rebuilt after WWll bombing. There are poppies everywhere. We stop at a bar to enjoy a beer in the late afternoon sun and eventually decide to head to Brugge for the night so we get to have a couple of nights in one place for a change. First we drive through Passendale and walk through the cemetery. It's a pretty haunting place. It is hard to comprehend that so many lost their lives in this area alone in a battle on this very piece of land.

We are late into Brugge and are thankful to Maz for the guide book for camping sites in Europe as we still have not managed to arrange the internet.

While not dark and forboding like last night we comment on the sky again this evening. It seems strangly different to southern sky. It looks exactly like that in an old painting by a European master. Very beautiful and quite memorable.

Overnight we get to experience a wild electrical storm.