France was supposed to one of the easy ones: a short, three-day hop over the entirely flat, north-east part of the country.
Three kilometres short of the Belgium border I ended up stuck at a lovely organic farm/campsite for 10 days by a mixture of a painful shin that needed resting and the inability to move on to the next campsite as it was fully booked during a public holiday weekend.
So, because France was flat I can’t really bang on about the scenic beauty, and the only people I really met were charming Ruben, the young owner of the farm, and Juliet, a French woman who tried to cure my leg with a magical green clay.
I did however become intimate with the nearby village of Bambecque and, as a result, now know I’d prefer to live somewhere with a cash machine, a supermarket, a functioning bus service and, y’know, just about everything else.
But the farm was fun, with its cats, dogs, sheep and chickens, and it provided me with a cheap place to mend my dodgy leg. So, thank you, Ruben. And to Juliet for the green clay.
