Beautiful Bruges

Mon 4^th

We enjoyed a very relaxing, easy drive across to Bruges in the sunshine. We found the aire which is literally a stones throw from the medieval town centre. It is alongside the canal and boat marina which sounds great – what wasn’t so great was the very tight parking spaces marked out. Sardines! There was only just enough space between the vans to open your door. We struck lucky and got a space beside a small grass area which made it slightly more bearable. There was also 3 Carthagos parked in a row. Safety in numbers?

3 in a row

The cobbled streets of Bruges were lovely and lived up to expectations and more. What a lovely city that certainly deserves the description “ The Venice of the North”.  We wandered about exploring the streets leading up to the main square. Wow – what brilliant buildings and a lovely atmosphere as the many horse drawn carriages clip clopped by.  All the buildings were well preserved and being enjoyed by lots of tourists from all over the world.  The beer museum was very popular.

lovely Bruges old town

well earned snooze

That evening we enjoyed a meal sitting outside right by where some of the horse carriages stopped to rest and feed the horses. Interesting to watch all the mainly female drivers dash to water the horses before they got their mobiles out to furiously text away.  Nice place.

lots of these around

Tues 5^th

First stop Auchan in France to stock up with beer and wine to leave in our container back in the uk – we were having a quick pitstop back home to get the fridge properly sorted and also have the handbrake cable replaced. Of course it would also allow me to have a quick blast on my KTM motorbike.  J   after a quick shop we headed along the coast to find a site for the night – what a frustrating experience. All our normal places were full or very busy. We ended up staying in a very nice carpark just above Escalles with at least 10 other vans. This would mean that we only had a 10 min drive to the Eurotunnel at 6.30am the next morning. Yikes – the earliest start for 4 

months………..

Escalles carpark for the night

viewed from above