Category: France

Losing track of the days now.

None of my sources could identify a suitable campsite within Lille city limits and I therefore elected to stay a few kilometres outside of Lille at a place called Peronne-en-Melantois. Peronne-e-M is a little more than a hamlet and the campsite I found is not much more than a field in a farm on the edge of the hamlet. The proof follows:-

My immediate neighbours on the campsite

Oh…and this one knocked about with a cockerel that sounded off non stop for a good hour from about 5.15am. Perhaps not surprisingly, the cockerel didn’t hang around to get his picture taken!

The only real positive about Peronne-e-M is that it is just a couple of kilometres walk to another hamlet (Fretin) which at least has a station (well, a sort of station because trains do stop there) and it is on the Gare de Lille Flandres line. I had to wait a while for a train but in less than a quarter of an hour of the train arriving at Fretin, I was at the Gare de Lille Flandres and right in the centre of the city.

You would be hard pushed to know you had arrived at the village without this sign

Lille is France’s tenth largest city and it has some striking buildings, many of which are on or near the Grand Place just a couple of hundred yards from the station. Grand Place is also known as the Place General de Gaulle (after the visionary French Brexit campaigner General Charles de Gaulle) who was born in Lille.

I took a few photos but they were all rather rushed. After my last few days in Belgium, Lille was simply too busy for me. I had dinner there (it was nothing to write home about) but otherwise didn’t stay long because I wasn’t sure when the last train left the City for Fretin. It was dark by the time I got back to Peronne-e-M.

One of the more attractive buildings, especially inside, is the Catholic Church which is en route to the Grand Place.

I’ve covered little more than 45 miles in the Van over the last few days. At this rate I’ll not get across the Alps before winter. The Grossglockner is already shut. I’m going to have to find another route through Austria. Time to check out the French Auto-routes…

The Channel Tunnel crossing from Folkestone to Calais was a doddle (and very quick). I booked it online and simply followed the instructions in the confirmation letter from Euro-Tunnel and then the signposts in Folkestone. The rail crossing itself (if something going under the sea can be termed a crossing) was just 35 minutes but the whole journey from leaving Dave’s house in Canterbury to my parking place in the centre of Kortrijk in Belgium took less than 4 hours.

One observation I would make regarding the crossing is that the train rocked almost as much as any ferry I have travelled on – I didn’t have any Stugeron 25 to hand to combat motion sickness but the acupuncture learned on the Caribbean cruise earlier this year worked once again. Hurrah for alternative medicine (assuming always that acupuncture qualifies as alternative medicine)!

Regarding the journey from Calais to my chosen destination of Kortrijk, it was straight forward. The downside was that I spent a good 1.5 hours listening and responding to a French language tape only to find that the Belgians in Kortrijk studiously avoid speaking French. They speak, read and write Flemish; English as a foreign language and; French only as a last resort. I should have realised this beforehand given that Kortrijk was previously known as Courtrai (at least by me). Oh well.

Time to go and explore Kortrijk.