15 July 2018 (Sunday) - Mega Road Trip (Day Three)

Yesterday had been a rather busy day; I fell in to my pit feeling rather exhausted last night. I didn’t sleep well though – the hotel room was *so* hot.

As "er indoors ^TM" got herself sorted this morning I wandered down to the restaurant where I met Nick. He was just finishing brekkie. I had a rather good brekkie of croissant, brioche, pancake-thingie, and something which looked like madeira cake (but wasn’t).

Sarah and "er indoors ^TM" soon joined us, and with brekkie devoured we set off. Having had to cut our trip short yesterday we drove out to the war cemetery to have a look-see. This war cemetery was yet another triumph of geocaching. We would never have gone there if not for the virtual cache there, and we arrived to be fascinated. It was a war cemetery for the German dead. So many young boys had died.

There was a little walk round the nearby woods where there was an old bunker from the war still there, and you could still make out the lines of the trenches. It was such a quiet, tranquil, beautify place. You couldn’t imagine the carnage of a hundred years ago.

The plan had been to help at the geocaching CITO. A CITO (cache-in-trash-out) is all about tidying up an area, but to be honest everywhere we’d been had been *so* tidy (except yesterday’s condomshitestrasse) that we thought we’d skip the CITO. Instead we used the geo-map as we have done before, and picked out random geocaches in the hope that they had been placed where there was something interesting to see that we wouldn’t otherwise find.

We found a rather pretty little chapel. We found a rather pretty beach (where we got a parking ticket). We found a huge statue of ear trumpets (can you believe it?) We found a war memorial to the fallen British troops. We found a golden bear in a flower garden. We found a statue of some seals. We found *so* many obscure and odd things. But time was pushing on…

We drove on to the ferry terminal. On Friday I whinged about how disappointing the ferry terminal at Dover had been. In retrospect it was streets ahead of the one at Dunkirk. The terminal at Dunkirk had some vending machines, and that was all.

To make up for this we had dinner on the ferry. Fish and chips – very nice.

Almost exactly two days after Nick had picked us up he dropped us off at home. A round trip of about five hundred and fifty miles. You can see the photos of day three here. It was a rather good weekend away. I wonder when the next international mega-event is taking place?

We unloaded our bags, then visited the fruits of our loins to collect the hounds. Both seemed to have had a good weekend; both slept for the evening despite the noise from new-next-door. Over the years we’ve had all sorts of people in that house, but these are far and away the noisiest. They were having some party this afternoon. Did they need the music to be *that* loud? On the one hand I don’t think I want to live next door to people who are that noisy. On the other hand it gives me carte blanche to be as loud as I like.