John, Sandie and Roger departed around 9, heading 300 miles to their ferry. Howard and I had a mere 250 miles to the Eurotunnel to travel, also the consequences of missing the four-an-hour train are less dire than those of missing the four-a-day boat, so we made a more leisurely start and stayed mostly off the motorway.
It looked like being another lunchless day (cafés and supermarkets that close for lunch? What's the big idea, France?), but around half-past one I spotted both a bar and a chip van by the side of the road.
We bought coffee from the bar and chips with meat products from the van; the latter were delicious, but probably worse for me than everything else I ate over the weekend put together.
The bar turned out to be the home of the Moto Club du Parc, with bike memorabilia for sale and motorcycle magazines to read. The chip man also had bike posters in his van next to the illustrations of different sorts of sausage, and greeted us with "Salut les motards!". When we left I gave the barman one of my Modern Vespa forum stickers, which he proudly placed above the bar with his Valentino Rossi ones.
We missed our intended Chunnel crossing and had to hang around for the next one. For the record, there is nothing whatsoever at the Calais duty-free that I'd want to buy except unusually-flavoured Tictacs. Home around 7PM.
Verdun, and what happened there, are perhaps less well-known in the UK than other Great War sites because the British weren't involved. But it's a beautiful and fascinating area to visit.
