Day 10 A day derailed by a derailleur…and a good thing too!
Picked up at 5:00 am from our guest house in Dover for our trip across the Channel to Calais. Setting my alarm for a number less than 6 is just wrong.Chilling line up of transport trucks waiting to cross. At one point they estimated 10000, yes, 10000 trucks in line. Dover port was a mess. So glad we decided on the train. And no wonder supply chains are disrupted.Ken was frightened that all the water from the English Channel would flood the chunnel. Our taxi driver tried to reassure him by asking “you brought your brolly, didn’t you, Ken?” 🤣3 tunnels..one for the passenger train (Eurostar), one for the car/truck train (Eurotunnel) and the escape tunnel which Ken was very interested in.Our driver Jonathan. Very entertaining and knowledgeable. Said the ticket prices had more than doubled since I booked. We all fell asleep whole on the train (being the excruciating early hour that we had to get up) and the joke became that Jonathan was an excellent driver but did fall asleep at the wheel.Finally picked up our bikes but headed out in the rain several hours later then we hoped.Bunger the Bugsnax with the Burghers of Calais. This statue by Rodin (he also did The Thinker) commemorates an incident in 1347 during the 100 Years War when Edward III demanded that 6 of the town’s 12 burgers sacrifice themselves so the town could be spared. The 6 men in turn were spared by Edward’s wife. Wives are good peoples!And off we go along the canal.Famous last words: this whole country is flat as a pancake, this should be easy!Aw…little peeping ducklings.8 cygnets!And then…oh no! Saint Theresa, help us! Bicycle breakdown. We were stuck by a church which happened to be open.So…after encountering unexpectedly long and steep hills (see aforementioned famous last words) and just after we crossed over the Eurostar rail line, Ken’s bike went kaput. We were 20 km from Calais. Ken being Ken he had picked up some twine along the way (Peter, we now have Stringy 3) and just like on the Camino it came in handy for some first aid on the bike…broken derailleur. He tied the derailleur up with the twine so he could at least glide down the hills to get to the next town. And push-up.The bike shop was not answering our calls and I remembered I had the card for a taxi driver I had hired earlier that day. I hoped he would remember me as we had sung along to the Village People’s YMCA together. He spoke some English and agreed to drive out to get us and take us back to Calais.Saw lots of baby bunnies while we were waiting but they were too fast.Just how many times are we going to stuff our bikes and trolley into strange cars? I have lost count. Christopher our Camino angel of the day. As a taxi driver he went above and beyond helping us out, even calling his son to bring tools to take the bikes apart. He wanted to know why we didn’t call him right away rather than pushing the bike 5 km. I blame getting up at 5:00 am for not thinking straight. It’s always a good day when it ends with beer! We managed to book a hitel at the end of the day, which wasn’t easy with all the holiday channel traffic.The Google car?
TerryandKenViaFrancigena2022 
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