July 30, 2015
Nieuwport, Belgium: Morning glory
CAST your mind back. The day after I sailed from France - "cruised", as brochures probably put it - the ferry company went suddenly out of business. The protests blocked the port at Calais. Hundreds of refugees trying to get to England profited from the blockage to break into waiting lorries.
Well, the situation hasn't improved. The protests are over but the despair of refugees has increased. Time and again they have tried to smuggle themselves to England and, repeatedly, the tunnel beneath the Channel has been closed as a result.
The solution on the British side has been to park waiting lorries not around Dover but along the motorway that leads to it.
Well, before dawn this morning I set off from Steph's mother's to ride the 50km to Dover. I left with a heavy heart. Any time I woke in the night, I could hear unusual traffic noise from the old highway that passes a few hundred metres away. At night it should be silent.
This morning, I found I hadn't worried in vain. The motorway had been closed and its traffic was on this old highway, narrow and with just one lane each way. I can't speak of what danger I was in because that was in the hands of the passing drivers. But I can swear to the wracking of nerves, the constant tension.
There is a rural route by quiet roads. I had, after all, followed such a route in the opposite direction close to a month ago. But that requires map-reading and darkness made that impossible. The GPS sent me on an exhausting route that crossed and re-crossed the highway repeatedly, trebling the distance.
The solution, the only logical course, was to struggle to Ashford and take the train. It was the first one that morning. It headed down to Dover, passing beneath the white cliffs and, slowly, through an unrestored tunnel in which, the conductor told me cheerfully, there was a chance that parts of the roof could come free.
Dunkirk, where the ferry halted, was ruined in the war. When romantics speak of the Miracle of Dunkirk, meaning the evacuation of troops from the beach, the people of Dunkirk ask where in their rubble the miracle happened. You can't help but sympathise but, equally, you can't help noticing that they've made of Dunkirk and its industrial surroundings one of the most ugly towns in France.
It is a good place to start any journey: anywhere you go after that is sure to be better.
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It's flat round here. If roads were busy, they had generous bike paths. Nor is it far to Belgium, where they call it Duinkerken. I could guess where the border was. It lay metres from a building with TABAC painted on its roof in huge capitals.
Europe is one large trading area, the world's richest and most expansive, but states set their own taxes. That creates tension at borders, as here. Cigarette and drinks taxes are presumably lower on the Belgian side, which made it worth climbing up on the roof and painting an enticement to Frenchmen down the road.
If you doubt the purpose, remember the language changes at the border. On the Belgian side, it's Dutch. And yet the word on the roof was French. There was no painting on the Belgian side. The effect was that I could sit at a bench and watch a steady stream of French cars arriving and leaving. Their average stay in Belgium was probably four minutes. It's all it took.
The next town was even more pointed. The long street was little more than cigarette and drinks shops. But not all was lost. At the far end, unexplained, a statue of cyclists. Which should never be discouraged.
Belgian bike paths are eccentric. They can be wide and smooth or narrow and crumbling. They change from one to the other, and from side to side of the road. This, of course, makes the obligatory use more dangerous than riding on the road in the first place
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But things are improving. I rode the calm, smooth and restful path beside the Nieuwport-Dunkirk canal and into Freddy Maertens country. The old world champion, still with more wins in a year than anyone in history, grew up here and still lives here. This lovely man, bankrupted by tax claims and a confessed alcoholic, works now as curator of the Tour of Flanders museum in Oudenaarde.
I'm camping tonight at a large commercial campground full of caravans and camping vans. People who pass look at my tiny tent and then look away suddenly when they realise I've spotted them.
Time to go to sleep now. Wel te rusten!
Today's ride: 88 km (55 miles)
Total: 2,760 km (1,714 miles)
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