Day 38 - Ypres to Dunkirk - ride total 2,955 k, 18,735 m

Our last full day of riding in Continental Europe was a short flat ride beside canals and through farmland in Belgium and then when we cursed the border into France (well actually there is no longer any formal border) we rode beside the dunes that are beside the Channel. The most noticeable thing with today's ride was the large number of other cyclists all out making the most of a great riding day. Well it works have been an even greater day had the cycleways been a bit wider. While they were really well sealed out smooth concrete they were quite narrow in places and when you have groups of Roadies coming toward you at 30 kph and you're heading towards them at 20 kph my incentive to keep well out of their way at times appeared much stronger than theirs. The other groups to watch out for are the couples or bunches of weekend riders most of whom are riding electric bikes - some are traveling far to far for their obvious skill level and like some car drivers are afraid to move over to their side of the track. 

Fortunately there were no near misses and we made it safely to the beaches of Dunkirk where the promenade was much much wider and allowed us plenty of room.

If I count the 75 km's of riding we did around Rome then I can say that I've so far ridden over 3,000 km's on this journey. We've had couple of days of rain, quite a few very hot days and some like today which have just been ideal temperature wise. Yes we rode over Passo Stelvio which was a big climb however there really hasn't been a lot of hills and we've only averaged about 500 metres per day which is about half of the 1,000 metres per day I budget on for any ride of a similar distance around NZ. We've seen so much history, so many different architectural styles, traveled beside canals, Motorways and over mountain passes, eaten lots of different food and lots of the same (I'm probably over croissants), found it difficult to get an English Breakfast cup of tea at times, taken thousands of pics, hours of video (and days of editing to come), had lots of laughs and met a lot of very interesting and lovely people (and some that were not), had to learn and speak four foreign languages, paid respect to our grandparents generation and those who gave up their lives so we could have ours.

Lest we forget - I trust I won't.















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