The first stowaway we had to address today, was the potential stowaway that could be brought back, unknowingly,  inside our fearless, but witless hound.  Therefore, today, the first priority was to see our loyal, but dozy hound, back on the train with us – in order to do this we had to find a vet that would stamp his passport as fit to travel and confirm that he had received the appropriate anti worming treatment and that his microchip number tallied with that in his passport ( he didn’t want his photo in it !)

   

At 10:30 this morning we had found Dr Petry who immediately asked whether George would eat the “bribe” of food that she had before administering the tablet, before we had said ” oui” he had stolen the piece of food she was waving about and had his nose in the can of dog food looking for more!.  She didn’t ask us if he had kept his appetite whilst travelling !.  By 10:35 it was announced that George was now stowaway free and was fit to travel.  First objective achieved. 

The second stowaways that we had to avoid were to be found between the vets in Calais and our destination for the day, the opal coast west of a Calais.  The town in question was Sangatte, the town at which the channel tunnel goes underground to pass the 23 miles across the English Channel.  The town has become newsworthy due to the large number of refugees that gather at the area in the hope of escaping whatever tyrant they faced at home and cross to, what they hope will be a better life in the UK.  It didn’t help that I had run out of cigarettes and need to stop in the village Tabac.  Returning to Reg, we checked all orifices to make sure that no one had ” snuck aboard”.  With Reg given the all clear, we were on our way to the opal coast.  2nd objective achieved.

The rest of the morning was spent on the beach watching the ships crossing the channel and gazing at the white limestones cliffs, mirroring those that could be seen on the horizon at Dover, reminding us that up until the last ice age, England and France were joined and it was about 8500 years ago that the straights of Dover emerged to create 2 new countries.

  

  

  

What was interesting about the cliffs (well I thought it was, you have to make up your own mind) was that the different geological layers could be seen, a metre or so of topsoil, followed by the chalk layer and ending at the base in a much harder layer.  The result of this was that water draining through the multiple layers, emerged when it reached the harder layer of stone and formed a waterfall, halfway down the cliff.

    

I think you’ll agree that at least George looks as though he found my description of the geological layers interesting if no one else on the beach did  🙂  

Finally it was time to address the 3rd castaway potential problem, that embarrassing problem of crabs….so I ate mine!

 

Thank you for reading today’s offering …..