Wednesday 19th July 2017 – Ardres, France

Our route today started with hills and lovely wooded valleys but passing by Dinant, Philippeville and Chimay we crossed the border into France and the land became flatter and less interesting. We have seen many styles of churches on our travels and either side of the border we saw large, pretty churches with ornate steeples that often seemed too large for the communities that they served. Also the small roadside chapels started to make an appearance.

We reached the E44 at Le Cateau–Cambresis and, although this is a major road, progress can be slow due to the large number of villages with 50 km/hr speed limits.

The weather was, again, very sticky with temperatures hitting 31°C, even higher than yesterday. Unlike yesterday’s continuous heat, today the thunderstorms hit. The first was spectacular with huge amounts of lightning, extremely heavy rain and then hailstones. The temperature was 28°C before the storm and 16°C when it finished. There were a couple more storms later in the day but with little lightning and no hail.

We were heading for the Le Bien Assise at Guines, a large campsite close to Calais that we had used a few times in the past. However, we looked out for smaller campsites as we approached Calais and as we drove through Ardres we saw a sign and followed it. Camping Ardresien is only 25 minutes from Calais port and is a very tidy site. There are only two motorhome pitches but both were available so we chose one with their fishing lake directly behind.

After dinner we went for a walk through the site, which is mostly permanent or seasonal pitches, and found that there was an exit at the back. This took us onto a road and to more, larger lakes and another campsite. It turned out that there was a connection with our area of the Somerset Levels. The lakes had been created by the extraction of peat but this had finished in the 19^th century, much earlier than the Somerset Levels where a small amount of extraction still continues.

We have noted Camping Ardresien (open April to September) and Camping du Café du Lac (open April to October) to our list for potential stopping places on future visits.

Photos: We passed this chateau at Leignon in Belgium; We knew that we were in a French campsite when we saw that our pitch was next to the Aire de Petanque; The lake behind our pitch; The café at Camping du Café du Lac with its larger lake; An even larger lake further down the road with more still in the distance.