London to Belgium

Getting out of London took ages but I took a nice route roughly following the Thames, heading for a camp-site near Canterbury by the end of the day. I still remember cycling under the Queen Elizabeth II bridge at Dartmouth because it is so big and I felt quite small there, just on my bike.

My first night camping was right near the sea on the north Kent coast. I was completely knackered when I arrived because the map I had relied to find a camp-site did not differentiate between caravan site and camp-site and I found that you can’t camp at caravan sites. When I did find one, which was at the top of a hill, I didn’t have any cash and so had to cycle down the hill and into town to find a cash point. It felt great once I stopped though and being on top of the hill I had a great view over the sea, it was another one of those “this is the life” moments.

The next day I discovered the many hills of Kent between the north and Dover, I was glad I only had to cycle for 4 hours that day, the best bit was dropping down into Dover and knowing that there were less hills on the other side of the Channel. Dover was a horrible place, I’d got a B&B near the port as my ferry was early the next morning, but when I went out for a walk I just found cheap and nasty beer holes, no character – horrible!

Taking the bike onto the ferry was a strange experience I had a expected to take it on as a foot passenger, as that was the price, but they made me have to drive into the waiting area with the cars and lorries though which made me feel very small. I did enjoy cycling through customs and passport control just like a car, but the best part was cycling up the ramp into the ferry.

Once I arrived in Dunkerque I realised that the map that I had which only just covered Dunkerque, didn’t actually go south enough to cover the ferry port, so I had to just guess the route by heading north for Belgium.

At the Belgian border I remember stopping at a supermarket that was just by the border, I left my bike in a bike rack and went and sat in the shade to have some lunch. A set of French kids then cycled up and stacked their bikes one against each other next to mine. I did try my hardest when I left but still somehow I managed to cause a domino effect with all the bikes, and that was how I left France. My first country covered in about 3 hours and I was on my way to Brugge.