Monday 18th May - De Panne, Belgium

When planning our trip, I'd spent quite a bit of time trying to work out how to best manage the ferry back to England.  I didn't really want to stay too close, but close enough that we could easily get there in time for the trip back to the UK.  

After scouring several camping search sites, I eventually found this one in Belgium which looked ideally placed if you were looking at it from Google Maps.  I liked the location, which was right on the edge of the dunes and a massive beach.  It was really cheap too.

It seemed promising at first, when I rang, because we thought we might be late (6pm was the latest entry), the voice at the other end was easy going.  We arrived at 5.50pm, and it became obvious this site was different to the ones we were used to.  We were allocated a pitch, the reception guy (owner I think) wasn't worried about us paying until he realised we would have to leave early, so we sorted that out, and then left to set up.  

It seems this was another of those sites where it was mostly occupied by long term residents.  Some of them seemed to live there, others were not about, but definitely made sure they used up the entirety of their pitch allocation, putting fences and barriers around "their space".  There seemed to be a large number of these long term pitches.  And then the rest of the site was empty.

We decided to have a walk into the town of De Panne.  The reception guy had been extolling it's virtues when we'd checked in, so we thought it might be worth a look.  And I wanted to check out the dunes I'd seen next door when looking at the site from Google Earth. 

It turned out that there was a path along edge of the dunes, but it only took us so far, and we decided we preferred the easy to negotiate streets and paths of the town.  It took us 20 minutes or so to walk throuth through the suburbs and then we were at the beach.  And what a beach. It was massive.  And windswept.  And gorgeous in the evening sun.  We could see why this place would be a holiday location.  Quite wonderful.

But to be honest, for us, it was the only thing that De Panne had going for it.  Back at the campsite, after dinner, we decided to check out the facilities......  And they were the worst we've ever come across in a site that has them.  The loo block was not clean, didn't have a single loo roll, and hardly any toilet seats, I ddn't bother looking at the showers. We tested the washing up area too, it wasn't pleasant either,  but since we'd lugged everything over to it, we managed.  As the saying goes, you get what you pay for, and this site is not one we'll come back to, no matter how cheap.  

So that was it, the last day of our European adventure.  Despite earlier worries, there were no great disasters (except maybe data usage in Switzerland), Peter managed the driving on the right perfectly, we didn't really have any language issues because everyone spoke English brilliantly, and shopping, laundry, transport etc was all easily managed as we went along.  A brilliant success then.  So much so that we have agreed that we are going to do it again next year - Norway and Denmark?  Croatia and Greece?  Watch this space.