We’ve made it to France!!! We spent a fantastic night last night with a fellow bike-travelling couple, who not only really understand what we’re doing (pretty much the only people we know!), but it turns out they have lived in Africa and spent a lot of time returning on holidays! Our trip was made very real by hearing their stories of wildlife experiences, gorgeous places to visit, suggestions on places to go, and actually realising – hey, we don’t have to just admire their photos and stories, we’re going too!!!! They put on a BBQ for us and invited some fellow bikers along, so it was a great way to spend our last UK night. This morning they gave us our final English breakfast, and then rode with us to the Channel Tunnel train, where unfortunately they were not allowed to join us while waiting for our train. We arrived so early that, as happened last year when we used the train, we were able to go on an earlier train – being a bike, we don’t take up much room so they happily let you jump up the queue if there is room! This was good because it allowed us to get into France a bit earlier and travel out of Calais before finding a campground. Campgrounds have been well advertised within the towns we’ve passed through on the smaller roads we’ve travelled. Already having a stock of food for dinner and breakfast, plus a few euros, made it easy to keep going till 5pm before stopping for the night, so that has got us well into the countryside, which is really nice. Already the campsite feels different – this one has the big tents and a restaurant and swimming pool, but none of the feel of a similar site in the UK. It’s much quieter, children are better behaved, it’s just…different. The staff have been incredibly friendly (unlike 
previous French experiences) and the owner wanted to get a photo of us for their website because he thought our trip was so great! (he hasn’t come by yet though) To top it off, there seems to be insects absolutely everywhere since we arrived in France, including a buddleia bush here in the campground that was absolutely covered in butterflies – so of course we set our tent next to it! I couldn’t believe how many there were and how close I could get to them when taking photos.The weather has been beautiful, and warmer than we realised when we passed through a large city – 30 degrees Celsius even at 4pm - but we were coping pretty well in our normal gear and summer gloves. We’ve passed through small town after small town and a lot of agricultural land (fully into haymaking) and even stumbled across the ruined entrance to a massive abbey just up the road from the campground (up high on a hill while we drove beneath – difficult not to see it and want to go visit!). I haven’t really got my head around the architecture yet, it’s been quite a mixed bag but mostly seems new, so I can’t say the place is beautiful or different really. We’ll be making our way fairly slowly (about 3 days) across north-east France to visit a friend in Zurich, Switzerland, for a few days before we return and start looking at France properly. We’ve decided to focus on rural France, to keep away from the cities we’ve seen before and try to get a better feel for the place. This is particularly because we’ve heard rural France is really nice, but also when we visited rural northern Spain in 2007 we absolutely loved it.
We’ve had some more bike problems – a squeaking not too long before we stopped for the night turned out to be a lugnut and bolt working their way loose from the rear wheel! This could have been a disaster is it had come all the way off. As it was, the nut was grinding so it was pretty obvious once Xander started working his way over the bike to find out what was wrong. While he was at it, he found the clutch cable had stretched, possibly due to the oil needing a replacement, which is pretty surprising seeing as he did it just before we left home. Hopefully it was just a bad brand. The tent pannier seems to be working well on the front of the bike, although I can’t tell if it’s creating more wind noise on my helmet or if it is actually more windy than it has been lately.Only other problem is that Xander has come down with a cold and is feeling pretty miserable tonight. We may end up staying an extra night here to wait for him to get better but will see tomorrow. If nothing else, it gives us an excuse to make use of the mobile bakery van that will arrive in the morning, and to take our time travelling to Switzerland!