CHAPTER 23
Coming back to our house was a little bit of a downer, for I had got back into the swing of the Flemish lifestyle extremely quickly, and the others seemed to have followed closely in my wake.

The others had succumbed to my cunning plan, one that had occurred to me at about one in the morning on my first night and thus brought a grumble from my tipsy wife as I quickly searched the internet for confirmation., and then Sunday was spent on the coast via a short bus ride. Jacky was a little reluctant, though, but only at first.

“I haven’t ridden one of these in years!”

“They’re electric. No effort. And it’s flat. And you get another country in”

“How?”

“Holland’s a short ride away”

Via the large nature reserve with rich bird life; something I forgot to mention. So, up to Knokke to the hire shop I had found, and then a leisurely amble/ride around the older town before following the cycle track through Het Zwin, thankfully now free of the abomination that used to be its bird ‘zoo’.

“No, Jacky. That isn’t a heron, it’s a stork”

“It not got deliveries to do?”

One of those very silly days, a little spoiled by more spray-paint ‘tagging’ than I remembered from my last visit, but it was beach and dunes, a breeze and a border, where we crossed into the Netherlands for a very indulgent lunch at the seafood place in Cadzand, which had Jacky mock-complaining.

“If you had told me this was what we were riding to, I’d have gone quicker!”

Mary sighed dramatically.

“But then she wouldn’t have seen so many birds”

“Heck, yeah, and that stork eating that snake, wow!”

Mary turned teacher immediately.

“Slow worm, not snake. Legless lizard. In the UK, one of our seven species of reptile, along with grass snake, adder, smooth snake, common lizard and sand lizard”

“That’s only six, Mary”

“Oh, sorry, girl. I forgot the Nigel Farage”

She lost her deadpan immediately.

“Not my joke. Stole it from Bill Bryson, but for him number seven was Michael Portillo”

A silly day indeed. We spent some time after our meal sitting on the turf on the dune side of the seadyke, soaking in a surprisingly warm sun even considering our sheltered position from the wind, watching the marram waves sweep across the land and putting the world to rights, internally as well as between the three of us. Mary gave up trying to make a blade of grass squeak between her fingers and turned to Jacky.

“What do you think? Would Jerome like this place?”

“Heck, yeah. He loves seafood, and, well, I know those bikes are electric, but I get a bit of, you know, like seeing what Ellie sees. I feel, don’t know, freer than in a car. Just a pity they didn’t have a menu in English”

“Welcome to ‘foreign parts’, Jacky. I was never into the long, long rides, but Ha---. But we would do quite a bit of gentler stuff round here. One trip we did a couple of times was to get off at Calais and ride to Bruges, camping on the way. And of course there’s a bird place not fae from Calais. Predictable as hell, she is”

She looked at me for a second or two, then grimaced.

“Hate that bit before Dunkirk, though. Dead straight road, past some sort of giant factory”

“Alcan”

“Thanks, love. Dead straight, dead flat, lots of traffic, and the road surface is really coarse, so your hands go a bit numb from vibration. Preferred what we rode from Boulogne, even though it had bigger hills. To Le Touquet”

Another glance at me.

“Guess what’s outside Le Touquet?”

Jacky grinned.

“Just taking a wild guess here, but was it a bird reserve by any chance?”

“It was. Still a really interesting area, though. Lots of First World War stuff there. Course, I didn’t learn. Let… Ellie picked our honeymoon place, in Mallorca, and yes. Hire bikes and a sodding great reserve down the road”

I laughed.

“Well, if you’d waited a bit, we could have gone somewhere else”

“What do you mean by waiting a bit?”

“Later in the year. Gibraltar’s great in migration season”

“Yeah, right. That a robin over there? Some birds I do know!”

She was Wonderfully, absolutely wrong, for a robin it most certainly wasn’t.

“Thank you, Mary. Not a robin. It’s a rosefinch”

“That a rare one?”

“Very, round here. Only ever seen two before”

“You can say thank you later by buying today’s chocs, then”

She started to laugh, all of a sudden.

“Those men, last night! Bloody hell—entitled or what?”

Jacky shrugged.

“Same old same old, girl. We all get it, if we ain’t got a guy in tow. ‘M’I right, Ellie?”

I nodded, sharply.

“Had a bit of it, yeah, like with that road-train driver in Australia. They say hello, you reply, and then they clamp on like a bloody leech. If you ignore them, they stay and get abusive. No winning in that game”

Mary looked from Jacky to me and back again, clearly seeking the right words, then nodded almost exactly as I had.

“I suppose, yeah. You’re right. Before, before this, if we went out, it was as a couple. Then, when Ellie and I… when things got difficult, when she moved into the front bedroom, I didn’t go out at all, really, not as in a night out. Last night, yeah, I was not relaxed after that”

Suddenly her mood broke, and she giggled.

“Well, after that third tripel beer thing, I suppose than I was relaxed”

Jacky simply said, “You had four of them”

“Yeah, but three was easily enough to relax me. Four just left me pissed”

A lovely, lovely day. We returned the hired bikes, trawled the streets for any shop that wasn’t in the Rolex price bracket, and then slummed it on the bus back to our base. Once again, Dirk’s place did for our evening meal, once again we ‘dressed for dinner, once again my wife made my face up.

“Why, Mary?”

“Because I’m doing it, Jacky’s doing it, and you will stick out a mile if you don’t. Get another set of men being dicks, you risk a kicking if they read you, and I am not risking that”

Good food, great beer, wonderful company. Our emergence from the Cheriton end of the Channel Tunnel felt like switching from a colour TV to black and white, but that might have been exacerbated by the light hangovers we were all carrying. A bus got us to Marylebone, and then the Chiltern Line home. Cab to the house, in, kettle on and sort the few bits of mail. As Mary set down a tray of tea and I the box of biscuits we had been saving, I noticed that Jacky had been at our bookshelves, for she was holding an old road atlas I used for basic route planning in the UK.

“This takes me back, Ellie, like everything now’s on an app, not paper, ey”

“Paper doesn’t run out of battery life, though”

“Suppose not. Anyway, lots of interesting places in here… Look. You two, ey? You’ve been great, but this should be your holiday. Don’t want you to use it all up on me. I can always get a rental car, do some exploring of my own”

Mary passed her the biscuit tin, having grabbed two of her own favourites, the sneaky woman.

“Jacky, love, how often do we get a visit from such a long way away? How often will you be here, and before you say something silly, it’s ‘not at all’. We get the same opportunity next year, Ellie and me, and, well, I shouldn’t have to keep saying this, but I know now that there will BE a next year. So give us some hints, and we can have a plan”

“It’s a long way…”

“Where to?”

“Scotland. Ben Nevis. Skye. I mean, back home it’s not a long way, but everything here seems further even though it’s closer. Like some odd lens effect”

Mary spat out a crumb when she laughed.

“Time flies when you’re having fun! I mean, this corner of the country is just so bloody dreary, it bores you to death walking through it. It will be busy there, rooms and roads, this time of year”

“Well, I’ve seen Ellie’s tent, so no way”

“We bought a new one, and three people do fit. We tested it”

“How?”

“That friend of hers, Judy. Ellie?”

“Yeah?”

“If we do this, I am not doing all the driving. I know how much you hate it, but a lot’s going to be motorway, so simple stuff. Would you be up for it?”

“I suppose so”

“Right. Now, just had a thought: got an old school friend moved up to Cockermouth—yes, Jacky?”

“Please tell me that’s not a real place name”

“It is, actually. Near Keswick in the Lake District. My idea was to drive up to the Windermere exit, then I’ll do the driving, which will be shitty with traffic, through Ambleside and Grasmere to Keswick. Gives Jacky a chance to see some of that. Ask Fran if she knows anywhere they can fit us in, then move on up to Glasgow, when, yes Ellie, I’ll do the driving. A82?”

“Makes sense, love. Ticks a lot of boxes, from Lomond to Skye”

“And that’s the question for---no, my mind’s just answered it for me. Jacky, I was going to be clever, and ask which film set, but we can do both”

“Film set?”

“Yeah. The road from Fort William to Mallaig goes past the beach from the film Highlander and that long train viaduct they like in those shitty wizard school films. We can then come back by Kintail. That gets you the first Highlander castle and… ooh, I’m actually liking this idea! We can do a short detour after that, and it’s Nessy!”

I did my best to keep a straight face as I asked if I should hire a trailer for the tank, which clearly left them puzzled.

“No, not an armoured war thing, a tank for liquid. For the midge repellent”

“Fair point that woman!”

It seemed our Belgian adventure had unlocked my wife just a little more.