Along the dykes ahead of Le Tour

Friday, July 03, 2015
Ypres, West Flanders, Belgium
It was only when we were half way around the Rotterdam ring road that we realised that the campsite at Delft had not given us back the ACSI card! ( When we had wifi later ,I emailed them and asked them to post it to us at home - we will need it if we go away again before Christmas)
We decided to avoid Antwerp and other cities and go 'off piste' a bit.
We circled Rotterdam (fantastic roads) and went on the A15 out towards the Europoort, passing the container port and massive refinery and oil storage.  We turned off onto the N57, and once across the last bit of the Maas and across a few dams, it was another world. Very rural, with beaches and boats, and lots of farms and cows.
We were aiming for the big dams and sluices across the Scheldt estuary.  What we hadn't realised was that the Tour de France would be going this way on Sunday 5th July!. Preparations were going on everywhere, with banks of Porta loos, crash barriers and signs and flags - great excitement!   We got our timings right because the road would be closed from mid day on Saturday.
We stopped for lunch and a walk at the far end of the big sluice across the Oostershelde, on the inland side.   This was sheltered, and there were lots of sailing boats.  We then walked over the bridge across the road to the North Sea side and into the wind.   There was a lovely big golden beach and a real holiday resort.   The dyke makes a fantastic cycle path and was really well used by families and holidaymakers.   We carried on past Middelburg and then through the toll tunnel (7e) under the Westerschelde (6.5kms).    We circled Ghent and Courtrai and were soon in Ypres/ Ieper having avoided most of the traffic on the first Friday in July.   
It was a really scenic and enjoyable trip and the first prize for worst roads on the whole trip (except for England) goes to ........ Belgium! Even their motorways are full of potholes and are breaking up badly.   Also, they don't believe in roundabouts or fly overs and even the major routes have traffic light controlled junctions where all the minor roads cross the main roads. This makes for very dis-jointed journeys and constant halts!
We found the municipal campsite in Ypres easily and luckily we had prebooked as they were full and we had to use their automated barrier entry system.  Unfortunately our allocated motorhome pitch was the middle one of three and we couldn't put our awning out - which meant no shade for us in the baking heat!
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