Journey: Hony, Belgium to Folkestone, UK
Distance: 332 km
Campsite for the night: Black Horse Farm Club Campsite
YouTube link: Days 29 & 30

Our final day on the continent. A sad day. I just wanted to turn around and drive South again, but sadly this wasn’t an option.

We set off for Bruges, which was a few hours away with traffic. It was raining and not a very inspiring drive — Belgium motorways are busy and the landscape isn’t dissimilar to the UK. As we were driving, we realised we’d get to the outskirts of Bruges just after one, which meant that by the time we got into the centre of Bruges using a park and ride, it probably wouldn’t be far off two o’clock. Given it was Ascension day, Emma checked if any of the vegan cafes we’d eyed up were definitely open and although they were, they shut at 2pm.

So after some hasty googling from Emma and more discussions, we decided to ditch going to Bruges and go to Ghent instead as it was nearer. We found a park and ride on the outskirts of Ghent (at their equivalent of the NEC), which seemed suitable. It had a regular tram into the centre and also didn’t have any height restrictions for Bertrude. There was also somewhere we fancied for lunch and we’d never been to Ghent, oh and there were trams for Emma.

The parking was perfect, and the tram in was very easy. We had a delightful lunch at Oh!MA, both opting for the vegan version of a Belgium beef beer stew. It was incredibly tasty and just what we wanted on the cooler damp day.

Ghent itself seemed like a really cool city, but was ridiculously busy. They had a food festival on which we knew about but also had another thing going on. The other thing seemed to be a strange event where all the clothes shops had stalls outside their shops, meaning the streets were very hard to navigate on top of being really busy. But we nonetheless had an enjoyable time pottering about and killing some time before heading for the channel tunnel.

Once back at the van, we continued on for another couple of hours to the channel tunnel and managed to get a crossing an hour earlier which was pleasing, as it meant less waiting about and getting back to the UK earlier.

Once we reached the UK, we were both pretty knackered. I’d driven all the way so this was my third country of the day! And all the rules suddenly changed. I had to drive on the wrong side of the road, all the speed limits were different and they were in mph. After a month driving in Europe, it was all very strange and kept catching me out even though we only had to drive for about 15 minutes. And then we were back at the campsite we started from!