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Well, it was now Friday morning the 23rd of March and the hardest part of the return leg had been accomplished. The next stage was to go back to Brussels for an overnight stop; this was mainly so that Alison could see where the Late Mrs F and I used to live when we stayed there and the places we used to frequent when we lived there.
We could get an early start on the Saturday morning to spend some time in Brussels before getting the return leg back to Calais out of the way with and the drive back up to Aylesbury.
So, after a hearty breakfast at the hotel, we saw the car being returned through the front gate and we checked out and Alison took this next leg to Brussels.
This was one of those trips where there were so many places along the way that we could have gone to in order to appreciate a lot of things about France, but were not on our radar for this trips.
Reims, Amiens, Nancy… I was just determined that we should stay as far away from Paris as we could, I really didnt like the idea of driving around Paris, not with the nutters that were always out there. So, we picked a more direct northern route that was scheduled to take 5 and a half hours and off we went.
It shouldnt take long to slip the bounds of Selestat and Strasbourg and head north towards Brussels.
In all honesty, as I wasnt driving this leg, I dont really recall an awful lot about it. It was mostly like Norfolk, from what I remember; arrow straight roads and mainly flat. We found an Esso fuel station while we were still in France before we crossed into Germany and then back into Belgium through the Schengen territories; no passports to show or any borders to stop at, we could just crack on from one place to another. I do remember some toll points on the French highways and I do also remember that my sister had to be reminded that the French police at the time were a bit more… zealous, shall we say, than their UK counterparts of the time who had pretty much devolved all of their responsibilities for traffic enforcement to the camera partnerships… so, the order of the day was not really to draw attention to ourselves if we could possibly help it. Not that we had anything to hide, but could just do without a member of the gendarmerie using us as the way to break up his spell of roadside boredom.
From what I recall, it cost around about £75 back then to fill the XJS up. That was all we needed in terms of fuel til we get to Brussels, at least. We picked up the A35 and headed north-north-east towards Strasbourg.
One thing that did strike me, admittedly prior to this journey but also during it; a lot of these roads are wide and flat and very straight and dont tend to bend around packets of land and particular estates or settlements or obstacles in the same way as British roads do; very handy for moving large amounts of armoured vehicles and tanks and troops and the such like at high speed.
Whether it would have been the Germans as in previous conflicts or the Russians as they were feared to want to do during the Cold War, of tanks pouring across Europe…. you can see how it could happen. Given that we were deep in the heart of Alsace, the region that the French and the Germans have been locked in centuries of conflict over, it seemed quite pertinent.
We continued to follow the A35 northwards and as it bends around the western edge of Strasbourg (Selestat was actually 40kms to the south of Strasbourg, so it was in many respects, like claiming to be staying in Birmingham but actually staying in Northampton, LOLZ) and eventually becomes the E50 as it winds through the Moselle valley and bends from due east to north around Metz to head up back towards Luxembourg.
We turn off the A4 at Argancy and head north on the D1 dual carriageway going directly north. Like driving the old A45/A47 across to Norfolk from the midlands. Semi industrialised, lots of logistics and distribution, but largely agricultural.
We soon cross over the invisible, meandering border between France and Luxembourg and just south of Luxembourg city, we take signs for Bruxelles, up to a big multi-lane roundabout, which was something my sister hadnt come across before on the continent… in due course, once we’d avoided Luxembourg City and turned North West on the A6, we soon came up on the Schengen border between Luxembourg and Belgium, which for all the world did look like and apparently still looks like an abandoned dual carriageway Little Chef.
Even if you didnt know you’d crossed the border, there would be one thing that would immediately give away the fact that you were in Belgium and that is the state of the roads.
I remember how bad it was and how awful the potholes were between 2009 and 2011 and the intervening time had certainly not resulted in any further investment or maintenance of their highway network.
The pothole situation in Belgium at the time was dire and was as bad then as the UK is now, if not worse. Most of the network appeared to be concrete based and as such was never going to last without frequent and extensive repairs that were not kept on top of.
Eventually, an hour or so later, we start getting into the suburbs of Brussels and start seeing signs for Ring 0, which always gave me a cold shiver. Part of me was glad I wasn’t in the hot seat for this particular trip, but I was also nervous as it was my fluppin’ car, LOLZ.
Its now a Friday afternoon, its busy for the end of the week and we’re heading onto the Ring Road. I was obviously keen to take it as gently as possible to ensure we dont end up getting into any scrapes if we could possibly afford it.
Getting on to Ring 0 at this point is quite easy. The problem comes when you try and get on and off it when the exits and entry slip roads are in close proximity to each other, as I referred to back in Day 1; it is like the Coventry Ring Road on crystal meth.
It didn’t take much longer to get to the correct turn off for the hotel, Zavantem-Hennaulaan; Hector Hennaulaan was the road along which the late Mrs F and I rented a flat in Zavantem while we were there a few short years earlier.
So, once we were seeing these signs, we were no more than about 10 minutes away. The journey had started at around 10AM and it was now coming up on 4pm, so given that it was a Friday afternoon and half of Brussels was trying to escape, was not too bad.
The slip road off the Ring then crosses the four lane wide Hector Hennaulaan, and turns slightly west towards the suburban business district of Diegem, which is – or rather was, when I remember it – stuffed to the gills with European HQ’s of large British, French and American corporate entities. As such, it has a lot of traffic from abroad in terms of business personnel and to serve that traffic, there are no shortage of hotels.
I had booked us two nights into the NH Hotel in Diegem, a rather curious glass and steel modern building, built to look from the outside like a rather large boat or ark. It was though, next door to the train station which would lead us into Brussels Centraal the following day and it had a restaurant and a secure underground car park for the XJS and was able to furnish my sister and I with separate double rooms for two nights. That was plenty enough for me.
We checked in, had a freshen up and met in the bar later on for a bar meal at their bar/brasserie. Neither of us could really be bothered in going out exploring looking for restaurants that evening, particularly as it would have meant more driving or going out at night into Brussels on public transport, which even then wasnt a particularly good idea.
We had a couple of local beers and if I remember rightly, burgers and frites and called it a night. Tomorrow was to be a day in Brussels and then on the Sunday we’d return back to the UK via the Shuttle.
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