Cuckoo! We wake to a warm morning full of birdsong and the first cuckoo of the year. Ali has another look at the horses then we set off at 10:15 bound for France, after a fuel stop back in Middelburg. Traffic is light as we approach the Turneuzen tunnel, sink below Westschelde for 6.6km and turn west towards Belgium, past the last two Dutch windmills of our trip. Our route through Belgium is mostly motorway, avoiding the tortuous coast road we took on the way...

Plentiful persistent precipitation again last night [there are only so many ways to say it’s forever hoying it down]. Before we leave Ali pops back to the shop for some more beer, this time in smaller bottles. The roads are up and down a fair bit until we start approaching St Omer when it levels out to the flat fields of the Somme, green and straw-yellow or newly turned earth which, being wet, shows how its reputation for being cloying and sodden caused the q...