After we left Holland we drove into northern Belgium which neither one of us cares for too much.  Southern Belgium is much nicer but was too far out of the way at this point.  So we did a flanking maneuver and drove to just a very few miles west of Calais, France. Actually, we are only 85 miles from the port in Zeebrugge. We are at an Aires in the country on a hill overlooking the English Channel and White Cliffs of Dover. It’s quite nice compared to the places we had been the few nights previous. We’re here for two days (no internet though) and tomorrow will go a little farther east. I think there’s another place to park at Gravelines right at the port watching the boats. We need to be in Zeebrugge either Friday or Monday to deposit the shipping funds into the bank account there. Then there’s two free Aires in Zeebrugge and two or more just west in Oostende that we will check out.  At least we are at the point of not having to buy any more diesel fuel. We did have to get a little more propane yesterday but must use it all up prior to dropping Tulip off at the port the 4th.  It’s chilly enough anyway that we run the heat in the morning.

The sky is too overcast to see England and the white cliffs on the other side of the channel.  The countryside is just gorgeous with patchwork fields of wheat and little villages.
We started stashing and rearranging our things today. Also Steve spent quite a bit of time trying to repair damage from ANOTHER incident yesterday. He backed into a pole (after panicking because he turned down a one way street) and swore there was nothing behind him and it was impossible that he could have hit anything even though there was a lot of crunching sounds going on.  Anyway, that resulted in a broken tail light, two 6″ cracks in the fiberglass and broken latches on an outside cabinet.  I wonder if fiberglass can be repaired to look good as new again because we have a chunk of fiberglass missing in another place and more cracks from hitting a basketball hoop in Newfoundland.  When it comes to “coulda, woulda, shoulda” we shoulda been driving around Europe in a van.  This RV is so small in the U.S. but in Europe it has become a monster in size.