Le dash to le channel

The new air bed, the Thermarest Neoair (small) in pus yellow and dead flesh grey, certainly packs up light and small but, once up and inflated, it becomes a bucking bronco with wanderlust. On the numerous occasions I woke up because the darn thing wouldn't stop bouncing me about, the mat and I had ended up in yet another cosy corner of the palatial Vango Banhsee 300. Yes, that tent is so big you really need staff. There's even an echo.
We were up and about and discussing bowel evacuations and vegetarians at 7.30. The sky was cloudless and the warm breeze swept the heavy dew off our tents. We stuffed our faces with the porridge and honey provided by N while discussing bowel evacuations and conspiracy theories. We left the campsite spotless on the dot of 10.32 and within a few minutes we were hurtling - no - flying down the lengthy hill that had brought us up onto the plateau on Monday. Having done 95 miles on the first day, the 60 miles return to Dieppe rolled off the tyres. Within three hours we were beyond Forges des Eaux taking luncheon in Neufchàtel en Bray at a lovely restaurant just a few twists and turns from the Avenue Verte in a beautiful retail park. A delightful children's play area adjacent to the al fresco dining feature provided great entertainment: boisterous jumping about on rubber mats accompanied the wonderful sound of gay abandon and carefree shrieking that we all cherish in our pride and joys. D gorged himself on the fish while N and I both opted for meat sandwiches. We hotfooted it from McDonald's and we were sipping a lager outside a bar by Dieppe's historic and prosperous harbour by 4pm. Once the boat had slid out of the harbour on a silky sea, we got a view of Dieppe's expansive sea front and realised we should have hung out there. Maybe it was the sunny day versus the pissing rain that gave Dieppe a substantial edge over Newhaven.
There only remained for me to crack open a bottle of mock champagne to toast our trouble-free trip. There were just two further possibles - being late for the cheap train, and, the final episode of D's out of date passport with which he had managed to get through three sets of officials with out any of them noticing.
Both eventualities weren't eventual. We sat on the train and couldn't quite believe we'd done the trip.

The roads in France were easy and, for the most part, reasonably 'safe' although there is no such state of being on a bike. We'd would have been safe had we been driving a tank - they are well up there in the league of vehicles to feel safe in but there is no way I can keep a tank in my flat - although one could fit in my tent.