Tuesday, 8th July – London to Brussels

Today we left London to commence the European leg of our trip, it was an interesting day and we experienced the first disruption to our schedule.

The plan was to catch the 6.40am Eurostar train from Kings Cross and arrive at Calais by 9am. Unfortunately, the Channel Tunnel was experiencing congestion issues and we became stuck 2 kilometres outside of its entrance. This delay meant we didn’t reach Calais Ferry Port to pick up our hire car until 2pm.

We weren’t alone in our delay. There were photographers, team managers and one very well known Stuart Grady, also waiting to pick up their hire cars. They were very late to join the Tour De France.

We picked up our brand new Peugeot 2008 and the fun of learning to drive on the wrong side of the road began. Keith was amazingly calm and took it all his stride despite 130km speed limit highways and a freaked out wife!

We reached our accommodation in Uccle, 10 mins outside of Brussels. We looked around this cute little town to decide on somewhere to have dinner and a well deserved glass of red wine.

Unfortunately plans to sightsee in Brussels and Bruges were casualties resulting from the delay. Fingers crossed for a more ‘to plan’ day tomorrow.