And off we go...

12 April 2009, Tournai, Belgium

First day out of London. Only about 10 minutes late, but someone rocked up even later, so that seems forgiveable. Flat is vacant, unrented, but had several views last week so fingers crossed. Lots of decent people with us, mostly circa our age with about 6 who seem about a generation up. Truck is comfortable enough, our own seats and with power points and a bar and whatnot. Got the ferry from Dover, with the sun shining us out of Merry Olde. So nice to have someone else sort out the details...feel a bit lazy to do it this way, but at least when we went round the parking lot twice looking for the right queue, it wasn't cause for bickering. That's one more divorce-free day for D and me.

As I write in a blue tent, a group of crazed Belgians appear to be playing a rousing game of strangle-one-another just over the privet hedge. Have been (randomly, perhaps not wisely) assigned to the task of loading and offloading everyone's bags every morning and evening. Rest of the task group consists of a boy who had difficulty in opening his own Gatorade bottle this morning and a girl with a broken wrist. Add in me, who can't actually lift my own bag, and you've got the makings of a decent 1960s-era French farce film. Perhaps a musical. David gets to throw things off the roof of the truck. He seems pleased in a manly way. These are our assigned tasks until Baku, Azerbaijan...

Had a first communal meal of spaghetti bolognese, the traditional food of hardy campers anywhere...shades of Swartzwood State Park, circa 1982.

So far so good. Getting a bit chilly...some of my fellow homeless-cum-jobless folk have gone for a walk, but my Lonely Planet tells me that we are some 4km from the city centre, and even a 12^th century cathedral isn't enough to tempt me away from my tent-pitched-on-a-slight-hill at the minute. Tournai, as you know, is the only Belgian city to have ever sent an MP to the British Parliament, in the 16^th century I believe (no Wifi, can't google it), when the city belonged to England for about 6 years. So there.