We spent the day slowly making our way along one of the main roads, which are surprisingly different to UK non-motorway roads. There seems to be a town every 10 metres and you barely get up to the 90 kmh speed limit before another town appears. This has made progress very slow, so we popped onto a motorway for one stretch, and will probably do a bit more of this tomorrow. There are also toll motorways that we have to be careful of, as we found yesterday just as we got started – hence why we’re travelling on smaller roads, but these are usually nicer anyway. As we’ve started coming more south, the towns have grown prettier and the landscape is looking much nicer. Around 3pm, we saw our first hilltop chateau off in the distance, but we quickly entered the town it’s in and it was no chateau! Instead it’s a citadel, a walled city, but very unlike those we’ve seen in other places. Like some we saw in Romania, the place is basically a ruin but there are still many houses inside and even a couple of shops! We drove up, expecting to stop outside for our photos due to an expensive entry price, but to our shock, we passed through 3 ancient gates and were suddenly inside the walls! We’d passed a campground on the way up the access road to the Citadelle de Montmedy. While feeling better by now, Xander was pretty tired so we decided it was worth stopping here for the night so we could enjoy walking the walls and go back to do some night-time photos. Such is the joy of just pootling along, with no fixed plans or timeframes, where you can do whatever takes your fancy. I think I could get used to this! The citadel is amazing, the walls are absolutely massive and tunnels and cellars appear all over the place to take you through them. They seem to keep getting deeper down the site too! We haad a lot of fun exploring whatever tunnel we came across. There are a few ruined buildings inside the walls, and a number of apartment blocks of traditional styling. There is also a church but we couldn’t go inside as they were putting on a puppet show. As far as we can tell, the place was built in the mid-1600s. We went back at sunset and got some beautiful golden shots of the outside walls, and I’m trying to decide now whether to go up on my own to do some night photos, as poor Xander flaked out quite early.The campsite is gorgeous, the best we’ve seen in a long time. Most of the individual locations are separated by hedges, so there’s no chance of someone parking right next to you. We chose a spot that has a beautiful flowering tree over it. There’s only room for 30 groups, and it’s lovely and quiet for once!! French campsites are a bit strange so far – no toilet paper and no sink plugs, but at least we carry our own of both!
Today has not been without problems again, even though it has ended well. Early in today’s ride, Xander heard a metallic clunk and looked down to find part of his keychain missing. We searched the road for about 15 minutes before he realised he’d left that section in his trousers – I could have throttled him!! Unfortunately we found we had lost something else – sometime yesterday my winter gloves went missing, as it was the first time I tried out my summer gloves (which I’m very happy with so far). As luggage space is tight and I changed gloves last minute before leaving the UK, my gloves had gone into the tank box but somewhere along the line were taken out and we must have driven off without them or they fell of the bike. This either happened on the Channel Tunnel train while were swapping the UK map book for the Europe one, or it may have been when we stopped on the toll road to dig out our euros as we weren’t prepared to need money so quickly! It has worked out OK though, as there have been plenty of motorbike shops around and when we realised late this morning that the gloves were missing, we just dropped into a shop and got a new pair. Not good for our budget though!!! We’ve already left a couple of random bits and pieces at people’s houses along the way – much easier to pack a campsite and know nothing is left behind! We’ve got to be more careful about where we put things and make sure they will get packed again by making them very hard to miss!We’ve experienced an interesting phenomenon while preparing to travel – people are setting us challenges! I figure it’s high time I noted these down, for others to follow but also so we don’t forget them. It will be interesting to see if more challenges arrive along the way!
1) Gareth – to find a bongo in the Congo (a type of deer)
2) Xander’s work colleagues – gave us a donation to use towards a fancy meal in Morocco in a restaurant like La Yacout in Marrakech
3) Tam’s work colleagues – gave us a donation towards a nice meal in Europe
4) Sam – when we find the most amazing place in Africa, buy a beer and raise it in his direction (don’t know when we’ll know – this challenge might be met a few times!!)
5) Pete & Deb – gave us their Morocco guide book, put their address inside, and we are to add our details then leave it for someone else to use, in the hope that the book will one day make it back home
I also thought I would note a couple of things I’ve learned along the way:
- never put anything just out of the way and not completely obvious – it’s going to be left behind
- in a quiet campground, put your tent near others, not in the emptiest location where many others can later set up next to you
- don’t leave helmets where they and the intercom connections can get wet – loud squealing noises in my head are painful!
- Xander’s mesh trouser pockets are perfect for putting my bras in for machine washing
- falling asleep on the bike (and yes, I do it frequently!) makes Xander jealous when he’s tired too
- butter in a ziplock bag doesn’t stay where you want it when the weather is hot