it required a wheelbarrow to retreive all the beer from my car.

roy and i went to calais, france yesterday, as a day trip via the channel tunnel; up at 0400h, out the house at 0510h, arrive roys at 0545h, leave roys at 0555h, arrive folkestone 0755h, drive aboard 0815h and half an hour of darkness later, we’re in france in a land-rover freelander.

we swung through the local hypermarket for a first-look, then went sightseeing and into calais old-town for lunch – stopped at a likely-looking place – bar de paris – and had a wonderful fish salad – mussels, smoked salmon, smoked halibut, rollmops and anchovy, on a bed of lettuce and lemon, with fresh rolls. gorged ourselves silly for EUR 45 / GBP 32 for a meal that would have cost us probably up to GBP 50 in the UK.

then a little more investigating – from my perspective this formed an interesting toe-in-the-water for future european motorbike touring – plus trips to castorama and leroy martin to pick up some sink fittings, and the proper shipping run to carrefour

result: 303 EUR spent on wine (mostly sauternes, which is ridiculously expensive in the UK) and beer, plus bits of sausage, roquefort, some cooking oddments (regret not getting the 12cm green iron le creuset gratin pan I wanted, so bought a small matching saucing pot instead) and a bunch of teisseire syrups. 48 cans of stella for my ex-boss, plus another 148 EUR on fags for a colleague.

an expensive day, but not unpleasant. back home at 2300h, with the realisation that if i set off on the bike at 0500h, i could be in the middle/south of france by nightfall.

interesting.