Sunday the 20th of July

Ah France !! Hey watch out for the dog poo

Gas - still around €1 per litre
Coffee - Nescafe again - what's going on here?
Beer - okay
Wine - good - cheap too

We are in high tourist season in Dunkerquer which has a great beach and seaside walk way. We found the Tourist Bureau and we end up in a 2 star hotel at 56€, again over budget but a least by only about 8€. We are getting better at this....We need to pay to park the bike in a secured lot for 6.50€.

It's Sunday in France and everything shuts down, all cafes, most restaurants and all stores. We must remember that. Again I need to get a new guidebook when we hit Ireland.

So we take advantage of our own bathroom and do a wash of clothes and take a nice walk to the sea. It's pretty peaceful and lots of French tourist. We don't hear any english anywhere.

My french isn't bad and I am doing well with the communication side of things. Patrick is also finding it easier to read the road signs and such so we are doing pretty well.

We are getting very tired and are going to try at some point to stay somewhere for 2 days to get a break. We haven’t had any great conversations with anyone yet over the last few days since Lokeren. We are looking forward to heading over to the UK and Ireland so we can relax and hopefully start meeting people. However in order for that to happen we need to slow down and stay in one place.

We find a take out pizza place and take it back to the hotel and end up watching french TV and BBC1. We are dead asleep by 10.

Back on the bike the next morning and we are headed to the Tunnel. We don't quite know what to expect but are excited, as we had seen the creation of the Tunnel on a documentary a few years ago.