The season so far went quite smoothly – a covidtest here, ten pages of paperwork there, etc. I got used to these little inconveniences over the course of the last 18 months but then the proverbial thing hit the fan earlier in the week. France announced that they would close their borders to all UK traffic. Luckily, I quickly realised that closure would come into effect at 12am Saturday, so I could just slip in on Friday evening. I tried to book a ferry ticket and while it was possible, prices skyrocketed. Luckily, I managed to get a ticket for the last Dover-Dunkirk ferry that was to arrive before the door would have closed.
I was hoping to get on an earlier ferry, so I left home at 3pm and I’m very happy that I did. It gave me just enough buffer to get on the 8pm ferry, as there was a mighty queue and it took me three hours to get from entering Dover to finally arriving at my designated loading lane in the port. Though everybody was surprisingly calm, the place definitely had an end-of-the-world vibe: hundreds of cars and everybody is waiting to get on the last boat out of Dover. The rest of the trip to Rucphen was uneventful, just a usual, bleak weekend in Belgium.
And if last week was the highlight of the season so far, today was a low point. I didn’t like the course and I just had an off-day. It felt like I couldn’t find a single angle that I liked. It’s a day to forget. Upwards and onwards to Namur.
