And here we go on another road trip of glory. This time we are accompanied by Sean
(hello) and Laura, our destination, Vielsalm in the heart of the Ardennes Forest, Belgique.
Laura and I had arrived at the Sweeney’s at around 8:30pm, Thursday evening – this despite leaving Sale, near Manchester, at just before 3 in the afternoon. The excessive delay was mainly due to traffic on the M6, as some considerate soul had decided to hurl himself from a bridge. Thanks, guy. It would probably have been worse had Laura not known about a secret way out of Keele services, which, although not being for official public use, got us moving again. Upon arrival, we were greeted by an excited Mrs Anna (excited mainly because she normally only gets to greet Andy, and we’re infinitely better), who made us tea. This means she wins, in my world. We headed into Hertford to grab some food, got distracted and had a drink, headed to actually get some food, had to wait for my plaice to be cooked, as I refuse to eat cod (go morals!), finally got food, and then went back to the flat, where Andy was waiting for us. After a hearty meal of fish and chips, we got settled and got ourselves some much needed shut-eye, as Friday was going to be an early start…
Our day begins at 05.30
(see? )to the sound of Sean’s alarm, I cant remember what the tune was but it was enough to wake us up in the next room.
(My alarm is a soothing Regina Spektor song. I doubt it was that, but Laura’s annoying noise-racket would certainly have done it.)With a groan, Anna and I get up, get some clothes on (its only polite) and got showered (obviously without clothes on). We roused the others and then we packed the car and grabbed some brekkie.
We left the house by about 0615hrs and began our drive. It was a great drive, we got to the M20, driving up and down hills and through the valleys with the sun rising in front of us. It was GLORIOUS!
(The roads were unbelievably clear. I wanted to comment on it but thought I’d just jinx us, so didn’t bother. When we got to Tilbury (Dartford), we learnt all about the big gas holder things, or whatever they are, and all the animals that live in them. Anna was worried that one of the Polar Bears had come with us. It hadn’t though. She is clearly a dumb.) What you learned was that there were four gas containers and each one had a different type of animal in them, one had polar bears, the others had Mongooses, Gorillas and Tigers. We worked out that it was a bit like Thunder-dome, two men enter, one man leaves.
We arrived at the shuttle in very good time and boarded on the 0900 shuttle.
I’ll leave Sean to describe the Chunnel trip.
(The annoyingly 9 o’clock-ish Chunnel trip, even though we were there for an earlier one. Grr.)
Anyhoo, having never been on the Chunnel before, I can now officially declare it the single dullest mode of transport ever created. After going through some incredibly lax border controls, (we don’t care if you are leaving the country) you get on a train in your car (which is quite cool, I admit), the doors shut behind you, and then you sit there while a speaker system speaks to you in both English and French. How very continental. Then, as the train begins to move, you look excitedly out of the tiny, and really awkwardly placed, windows, and watch as you go through what looks like an industrial estate, before disappearing into the dark. It is then dark for the next half hour. That’s it. No view, no trolley service, no piped music, no bar, no smoking salon, no escape from the smell of human emissions if you’re by a toilet.
Well, you do have to look at the advantages, its 35 mins, there are no waves, no sea sickness, no kids running round hitting each other and screaming and feeling sick. It is warm and smooth and you get to sit in your car, have a short sleep (not having to worry about being pick pocketed as you sleep in the bar) or grab some grub that you remembered to pack and bring along with you.
Eventually, however, the sunlight breaks through once more, and you emerge into…what looks like another industrial estate. Honestly, for all the money spent on the thing, you would hope that they might have tarted the entrances up a bit. But they haven’t, and so we dutifully waited for the doors to open. Suddenly, and without warning, the cars in front of us began to move, and we emerged from our carrier, blinking in the light of a French morning.
Saying that, you get to drive out of the train (pretty quick really, it is an ordered queue, no one cutting each other up as you all try and leave at once) and once out, you are on the motorway and up to speed in seconds.
On the other side, we went to Auchan, the uber Hypermarket of Glory. After stocking up on goodies, such as SMACK and other cheese based articles we started the drive.
(Smack is not a cheese based article. It is a breakfast cereal, and it has been proven that cereal is the only food on earth that does not go with cheese. FACT!
Anyway, Andy seems disinclined to discus the shopping Mecca that is Auchan. Ere, you can buy pretty much anything. Laura and I got ourselves 4GB memory sticks for 9€, and we are already planning our purchases for on the way home. These are guaranteed to include alcohol and interesting meats – I am definitely getting some snails and horse meat. The horse steaks look unbelievably good, and Laura has said she doesn’t want to try them, so I won’t even have to share. Result. I am tempted to get Jamie and Amanda down for dinner and not tell them what the meat is, although Laura thinks Amanda may cry if she knew she’d eaten Shergar. Meat aside, there is a massive selection of goods to buy, and all at relatively low prices – definitely worth a day trip.)
We drove and drove and drove until we reached the Spa Francorchamps race track. Amazingly there were cars going round the track and it looked like a Citroen 2cv racing day.
(I was lucky enough to sleep much of the way, as I was tired from all the doing nothing. It’s a hard life being me. Cars racing don’t massively excite me, although they were quite cool screeching round the track. We also saw some mushrooms which proved beyond doubt the existence of gnomes. Look at that picture and call me a liar.)
Upon arrival at Sun Parcs, our home away from home for the weekend, we went to reception to book in and get our keys. We then went up to our little house to unpack.
The houses are all very similar. The one we had was classified as a cottage, not much in it between them all really. It has a large living and dining space downstairs with a toilet and bathroom. Upstairs it has two double bedrooms.
Things to remember for the future:
1. bring tea mugs, they only have small espresso coffee cups.
2. bring a kettle, no kettle, no tea,
3. bring towels and bedding, we have sleeping bags but would be nice to have sheets.
4. Tea towels and washing up liquid are not provided.
5. To ensure that you don’t sleep in a position where your knee will knock against the ridiculously placed and ridiculously easy to switch on, light switch three times in the night, waking you up.
Sean, Anna and I went for a trip to the pool down the road. I’ve been here so many times now I kinda take most of this stuff for granted, so once again, I’ll let Sean describe the pool and the fun we had there.
(You cannot swim in the pool. It is too shallow and neither the right shape nor boringness to allow for swimming. This is due mainly to the fact that it is chock-full of fun things, up to and including three slides! (one massive twisty one, one tiny baby one, and one where they spray water at your back as you go down a slope) A wave pool! A Magic River! (a circular pool with a strong current running around the outside that just pushes you round without your doing anything) An outdoor section! A Jacuzzi! And much, much more!
We dossed about for about an hour, just playing like kids. There was a disturbing incident when we sat in the Jacuzzi, however. When we tree climbed in, there were three girls of around 15 in there, chatting away in some form of foreign and we sat quietly at the other end. Then a man came to join us who, and this is the disturbing part, had nipples that were about an inch long. Seriously, they were longer than any man’s nipples should ever be. We scarpered fairly shortly afterwards, and continued our fun-time.
Fun-time almost came to an abrupt end after we had left the pool, however, when Andy almost killed himself slipping on the wet floor. Sadly, he stayed on his feet, and hilarity was averted.)After about an hour, we came back to the house, collected Laura and we drove to Prüm, a lovely town in Germany. We went there last Christmas with Chris and Faith and we went back to the same restaurant.
Now I have to say, as little places to eat go, we can really pick them. This place is fantastic. It mainly sells meat in various forms, with loads of veg and in a really tasty way. I’ll let Anna describe the food as she is my resident expert! The restaurant was called the Posthotel.
NYOM NYOM NYOM
Not as descriptive as i would have hoped but accurate! Snitzel and Steak, was yummy indeed.
fog, we arrived at our first destination. The Nurburgring! It turned lovely and sunny and the car park, overflow field and the surrounding roads were packed with cars. It was nice to see a delegation from the “Pistonheads” forum there. I found it really difficult to get insurance for the trip round the ring. No one in the UK is currently supplying it as far as I can tell. For the money you pay, it is almost worth getting a ‘ring taxi’ as you will get a great drive round the track and there is no risk of you crashing and having to pay out a crap load of money.
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