Day 4 is not quite over. We have just boarded the ferry for home after a palavver over changing our ticket. On P&O coming back a day early costs a ticket change cost plus additional fare amounting to £60. I kid you not. In the end we got it down to £29 but even that is a disgrace when the website return is £19! Maybe when I next travel I will remember this rip off?
The problem was that Claire's hip wasn't causing the expected problems so we cancelled the night stay in Breda and had the run to Calais.
We left the hotel around 9.45am and wasted a bit of time getting to the Motorway. We had Steve in tow until the motorway when he shot off.
We stopped for petrol pretty quickly as I wanted to make sure that when we arrived at the badlands of the N49 between Antwerp and Brugge that we has loads. We made good time until I followed the overhead signs for Brugge. We had a tour of the Antwerp ring including three tunnels. The middle one carried a toll... So once you arrived at the Liefkenshoek Tunnel you were committed to the €5.50 toll. No going back!
We then lost another 40 minutes detouring into Eeklo for petrol. The station we had in mind from a previous trip was closed.
Had we turned right off the N49 there was an open station that didn't need us failing to get VISA and Mastercards to work. Belgium is generally fine let down by crap automatic fuel stops.
The last few petrol stops had revealed that fuel consumption peaked at 55.38mpg but was generally around 52. Not bad two up with luggage.
We stopped at the services near Middelkerke for a sandwich making the total time lost at about an hour.
We pulled up to the passport control the first time at 3.58pm. Not bad going for the 300 or so miles from Wapse. According to the satnav memory from Calais back to Calais has been a mere 667.5 miles. Add in the 30 miles to Dover from home and back again when we get off here in the next 20 minutes or so and 700 for the weekend is quite reasonable.
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