poliphilo

The Wallace Arnold Coaches are named after great British heroes. We travelled down to Dover on Boadicea, then transferred to Captain Cook.

I left a cardigan in an overhead locker on Boadicea. Two weeks later, when we transferred back to her for the journey home, it was still there and I was able to reclaim it.

We were meant to cross on the ferry, but the French dockers have a grievance and were "working to rule", so we switched to the Tunnel. I'd not been through the Tunnel before. The coach drives onto the train and is shut away with you inside it. Grim. I buried my head in Bleak House. As we zipped along under the Channel we crossed paths with Lady Dedlock who, "bored to death" with Parisian highlife, was sailing over it in the opposite direction.

The train runs so smoothly that you think you're creeping when you're actually zipping along.

We drove through Northern France in the evening light. We passed lots of battlefields- Dunkirk, Armentieres. Ypres. Its a flat country with lots of sticky-up spires.

We arrived very late at our stopover in Lille and ate our "evening" meal at midnight.

To be continued...