Day 23 - Belgium to Calais

The next morning, we missed a shower very much, which led us stubbornly to spend the whole day in the coach. At a petrol station, we got a terrible coffee and then drove directly on the motorway up to the sea, which we then encountered in the city of Oostende. We chugged along the coastal roads through some small tourist towns until we found an empty beach. With the fog coming from the sea, the two cities at each end of the beach looked eerily empty and gave the beach a mystical atmosphere. We spent some time walking along the beach and dipping our feet in the pleasantly cold sea. Sadly, we left the beach and continued driving. It's probably needless to mention what our car looks like after a visit to the beach. Since we throw everything in there anyway, the back seat looks like our home - which it is for this month.

A little later, we crossed another black line on the navigation system. We had once again changed countries and had now arrived in France. In France, we wanted to travel along the coast. Just before Calais, I thought it was impressive that a tunnel connects the French mainland with the British Isles and it would be great to quickly drive to England in just a few hours. Lost in thoughts about all the possibilities one has while traveling, we continued driving. In a McDonald's (where we tapped into the internet again), Jessica had a pensive look. I already knew it. "What if we went over to England for a few more days?" she finally asked. I thought about this suggestion for a few minutes. Why not? So we booked a spot on the ferry from Calais to Dover for the next morning (the Eurotunnel was a bit more expensive and we were already quite familiar with ferries).

We would spend the night a bit off but near Calais. We stocked up on food and movies at a Carrefour - we wanted to have a movie night. We found a perfect spot on a parking lot right next to the sea. Laughing and talking, we spent our evening and another night in the car.

This reminded us of a story from Norway that we missed: As we were used to on our long car rides, there was the next bathroom break. For that, we stopped at a small spot right next to the road that seemed untouched for years. Shortly after we emerged from between the trees, a car promptly stopped next to ours - probably the only two cars in a long time. Pretending to be busy, we watched as the occupant got out and disappeared into the opposing forest armed with a pink bucket. Jessica found him very strange and wanted to leave the parking lot as soon as possible because of it. In a movie, that would probably be the scene where we drove away with screeching tires, but we just drove away. Just before the first curve, I happened to see something happily jumping off our roof. Dammit. Just as I was about to draw Jessica's attention to our lost passenger, we drove past a run-over squirrel. Not a pleasant sight. Since we had no idea what we had lost and therefore didn't know if it was important, we reluctantly turned around at the next opportunity. I because of the run-over squirrel, Jessica because of the weird man. And there it was, right next to the parking lot, our toilet paper, ready to be picked up. Haha, we came to get our toilet paper. We had a good laugh about this weird situation. After everyone - including the toilet paper - was back on board, we continued.