Eurotrip day 13 7th Oct 2010 – Homeward

Neither of us slept too well, perhaps the anticipation of the final leg back home. We got up and went to get our final breakfast taking a table at the back of the room with a view over the ring and watched the official ring car going round first thing before the cars started racing round. We enjoyed some toast and cereal before returning to the room and finally packing our things up before taking the panniers and top box out to the bike. We did a final sweep of the room, paid Eddy and began the journey back to the UK.

I rode back through the twisty forest roads again to return to the main road and we passed through several towns and it seems the norm in Germany to have Aldi opposite Lidl. Within the hour I had ridden into Belgium, again no border crossing, and we stopped to get fuel. Alexa bought some Belgium waffles which we enjoyed before we got back on to the road heading ever northwards. We were on the AutoRoute and travelled around Brussels and past Bruges before stopping for lunch and fuel. We each had a panini and a stretch before climbing back on the bike to go the last 50 miles to Calais.

We reached the tunnel terminal at 4.30 and had over 4 hours until boarding commenced at 8.50pm for our train. Alexa spoke to the lady in the booth and for £1 we could change our ticket to the next train boarding at 4.50! Thank goodness! We accepted and were soon on our way through the lanes to our queue. The barrier went up and we continued to our platform where we waited a couple of minutes, as cars were being loaded in the top level of the train, before being directed along the lower level of the train very close to the front as we were on the journey out.

The train departed on time and half an hour later we arrived back in the UK. I rode straight off and got on to the M20 home. Within a few moments we were nearly wiped out by a small red car not looking before changing lanes and had several close shaves with cars trying to run us off the road! We’ve just been across Europe on the tail end of 2000 miles with no close shaves to report and as we get back on home soil became invisible!

We went through the tunnel back to Essex were a truck stopped dead in the middle lane as it wanted to turn off for the A13 but not queue in the slip road. I rode on and was grateful to get us home safely and put the bike in the garage!