It’s been weeks in the planning. Routes have been selected, hotels have been booked, bags have been packed. Then unpacked and packed again. Twice. Then checked and packed again but now it’s time to leave. Have I got everything? Too late now. Do I know where everything is? Yes. No. I think so.
I wheel the bike out of the garage at 6:30. Its a bright, clear morning, not too hot, perfect biking weather. I put the car in the bike’s place in the garage, bashing the mirror into the door on the way and lock up. I go back and check the house is locked, and the garage again, take a couple of pictures and have a small unpack/pack to make myself feel better. My neighbour comes out to his car, sees piles of stuff all over the car park and decides not to ask. I don’t blame him.
Then finally I’m off.
After going around the block to check the garage door again, I always have to do this, I’m on the road. Onto the M6, down the M5, the motorway I associate with holidays, onto the M42, M40 and the M25. I’m making good time, I’m enjoying the ride and it’s time to see if I can remember I have my big side cases on when I buy petrol. Will I bash into the pumps? I can as I don’t. Petrol stop successfully completed and dry bacon sandwich consumed it’s onto the M20 and to the channel tunnel.
I’ve never been on the Channel Tunnel so it’s new and exciting, I arrive in good time and type my number into the check in screen. Would I like to take an earlier train, at no extra cost? Yes I would, thanks very much. I stop at the terminal building but can’t relax because I’m nervous and excited and fidgety but luckily I can leave for boarding in 1 minute. So I leave immediately.
Passport control is painless, through the dour and functional UK check, a 50 meter ride to the French check which was a much more cheerful and enjoyable interaction and it’s off to find the bike queue. I join a line of UK registered bikes alongside a dozen Swiss registered BMW GS’s.
A few minutes of queuing and we’re off onto the train where I meet my fellow travellers for the first time. The GS guys aren’t very chatty, that’s ok.
My parking neighbour are Scots who are off to the German Alps. I tell them where I’m going and they think I’m mad but I also think they’re quite impressed.
One of them has a Honda Pan European, I know I’m going to be envious of him later on.
40 minutes or so later the train emerges into the sunshine and we say our goodbyes, wish each other a great trip and off we go. I’m the last bike off and I get a ringside seat as everyone dives for the petrol station unhelpfully located on what we all would consider the wrong side.
I’m ok for fuel so off I go.
The Eurotunnel terminal feeds straight onto the autoroute so I head east. It’s been a decade since I was in France and it hits me how much I’ve missed it. Familiar place names pass by and I laugh at Loon Plage and Plopsaland like I have done every time I’ve seen it.
France becomes Belgium and my mood, already good, gets a boost from crossing a border. It’s Sunday afternoon now, the roads are quiet, the weather is hot and sunny and I’m excited to get to my stop, have a shower and get some food. Three hours fly by as I grin to myself inside my helmet, bought new for this trip and before I know it I’m entering the outskirts of Turnhout. It’s at the slow speeds of a town that I realise just how hot it is. The sign on the pharmacy says 34 degrees.
Its some faff to get parked up at the hotel, I booked a hotel with a lovely big car park but Ive been ‘upgraded’ to their sister hotel in a more central location but with no apparent parking. I don’t want this upgrade and told the hotel people this but this upgrade is compulsory. They said I could park at the original hotel though so I go there to find the car park full of liveried little Renaults for a Dutch vending machine company but the hotel absolutely deserted. A man having a smoke leaves the door open so I go inside but there is no sign of life. I can’t get into the car park because there’s a barrier and having found no-one to open it for me, and it being 34 degrees and I’m in motorcycle kit, I head off to my ‘upgrade’ with my mood very quickly deflating. Next to my new hotel I find an underground car park, I have a brief conversation over an intercom with a grumpy Belgian who it seems like I’ve woken up and he lets me in to park and I can check into my hotel. It’s a nice hotel, a bit soulless but it’s clean, bright and has air con.
They try and sell me a €20 breakfast and give me my room key and I head off for a shower and a lie down.
I wanted to try some proper Belgian chips so I head out into the heat once more, but this time more appropriately dressed.
I’d found a place nearby that people who review things on Google seemed to enjoy so I take a lovely walk through residential Turnhout. It’s a very pretty, peaceful place on a Sunday. Not hugely exciting but that’s fine, if I wanted excitement I could have gone to Amsterdam.
Chip shop located, I join the queue. 20 minutes later, I leave the queue but with no chips. The service was so slow, only one person left with food in all the time I was in there and whilst I was waiting I could feel my bravery evaporating. The menu was in Flemish, every word I heard in there was Flemish and whilst I could muddle through in French, I have no chance in Flemish. So as I stood and waited, my anxiety grew until I had to leave. I took the long way back to the hotel to give me more time to be annoyed with myself, bought some KFC from a touchscreen and spent the rest of the evening making excuses for not having the nerve to ask for some chips. But I was on my way, out on the road, just me and my internet connected phone and credit cards in one of the most built up and developed parts of the entire planet. I fall asleep thinking I’m Marco Polo.
Distance travelled 410 miles, riding time 7 hours 30 minutes.
Day 1 is done.
