Saturday August 6, 2022, 72 km (45 miles) – Total so far: 2,612 km (1,623 miles)

We’d camped in the wrong spot last night, but thankfully nobody asked us to leave and we slept well considering the noise in the campground.

Today we continue down the North Sea cycle route. The path is mainly next to the sea and cycling through dunes.

We stopped for lunch at a cafe sitting on the beach. It was literally seats on the sand. Neat!

Today we cycled along promenades with high rises on one side and the beach on the other, masses of people in between. We weaved our way through the crowds, treating it like a game of Mario cart and it was fun. It made our other days cycling through tree-lined cycle paths seem boring.

At one point, there were a bunch of cyclists congregating on the track. Mike rang his bell, and they all started clucking in a language we didn’t understand. They reminded me of chickens when you’ve scared or upset them.

We crossed into Belgium today and suddenly we were able to use our credit cards again. Germany and Holland only take cash in a lot of places and we were running low.

After 72 kms we found a campground, and the people are very noisy. Someone is speaking loudly with what sounds like a Scottish accent, but it doesn’t sound like English. Some people next to us have only just started cooking at 11pm and I just heard a champagne cork pop. Now more people are yelling in strange languages. I think they are very drunk. Thankfully, none of this stopped me for sleeping.

We’re heading to Dunkirk tomorrow and we’ll either catch the ferry tomorrow or Monday. After that, we do not know how we’re getting back to Bournemouth. But we have a couple of ideas.

You can follow our journey on YouTube here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAP03_iOV9QrtahRxRPBTVB9ZTNOmdiznv