Day 2 Tuesday 21st June - mileage 523 - Avenses - Sur - Helpe, France

Nuz was up and away to work at 7am, but I got up with Jo and the boys at about 8am. Breakfast watching Tom and Jerry, then onto serious games of making bridges from Lego to drive trucks loaded with marbles under.

Left Reading at about 10am to head off to Dover. Arrived at Dover at about 12:45 and got onto the P&O ferry due to sail at 13:30.

The weather down to Dover had been very windy and I was expecting a rough crossing, but in fact the journey was not bad at all.





I studied the maps on the ferry and decided that I can take a route via Switzerland and Austria heading roughly for Slovinia and still make the decision later about which way to go to Turkey, so set Tomtom to take me on a non peage route going towards Strasbourg via Reims and had a very pleasant journey across northern France. I took a wrong exit off the main road at Lille, and Tomtom took me on a very interesting detour via half constructed bridge works and a major equestrian centre. I think it is fantastic when you make mistakes and the machine takes you to places you would never ever normally come across, and with these satnav's it is so stress free.
Tomtom then took me to Valenciennes and then Maubeuge and after nearly stopping a couple of times I came to a place called Avesnes - Sur - Helpe where at a crossroads there was a cafe and a band playing music. By sheer coincidence there was a Logis de France hotel just about 200 metres further along the road. The hotel was not nice and quite expensive (€50) but I was tired and so decided to stay.



After a shower and the obligatory washing of dirty clothes I went back along the road to check out the music. The band had stopped playing and were eating. I had a beer and the barman told me that they were going to continue playing after they had finished eating.



Had a walk around town and took a couple of photos of the church and some of the better buildings. Also saw an interesting face in the back of a parked car. It would be quite off-putting if you came up behind this when on the road.









Went back to listen to the band. Wow! They were fantastic. There were just three members, lead guitar, bass guitar and drums, but they played some fantastic music. Hey Joe by Jimmy Hendricks, and Johnny be Good and a load of fast rock and roll. The lead guitarist really played some fantastic riffs.



I love it when you just happen across something that really impresses you. It makes me wonder about how many great things there must be going on for you to just come across things almost by accident.

More later
TOR
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