On the Road Again!

Usually for our wedding anniversary, Claire and I tend to add to the carbon deficit of the world and fly somewhere, usually short haul, as I am far too tight to put money into the pockets of the likes of Richard Branson and his Virgin airline. I can often be found failing to get on "Airline" on the TV as a customer of Easyjet. Preferring to put my money in Fat Stelios' pockets instead. I have flown Ryanair before, but prefer to arrive at an airport somewhere near to where I want to go! Easyjet manages that quite proficiently. The reason we do this rather than be real bikers and ride everywhere is that I have owned a weeks timeshare for about 15 years now. I bought it at a reasonable price and have enjoyed quite a few holidays across Europe and once my ex-partner used it in South Carolina. On many occasions we have ridden to it, Hungary for example, the French Alps for another. A couple of times we have sold the week to friends to use instead of us to save losing th...

This trip was by car. Scraping the ice off the windscreen in the morning was enough to convince me that I really am a Fair Weather Biker nowadays. As you can see from the murky pictures, it was foggy in Nord! I know I should have gone by bike and froze to death to be a "real biker", but in the end we were warm and were able to visit the hypermarket at Grande Synthe and carry back 4 cases of beer and a large selection of wines! Lille itself was difficult to navigate and I ignore "Doris" (my GPS) as she seemed to be off on one of her "funnies" but in the end she took us right to the Grand Place. Unfortunately, the car-park was full and we had to look for another, eventually finding one above the Tanneurs shopping centre. On the way we drove towards the Flandres Station along a road lined with elephants. Not real ones, but large models of elephants as part of the decoration for a cultural event about Hindus and Bombay. More on that on this website: htt...