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The European Journal

Monday: The Romance of the Sea

Although yesterday was when Steve and I locked up the house and drove away, somehow today - when we drove away from my Mum's, leaving Xena the dog behind - felt more like the start of the holiday proper. It's just the two of us now and we're driving off into the unknown, or more accurately to a part of Newcastle I haven't visited before. We arrive at Royal Quays early and are directed to a waiting line by a very polite geordie docker. The customs people are equally, exceptionally polite as we're herded onto the ferry. We lock up Leeloo the Laguna and go to our cabin. On the way, we pass through the foyer where a pianist is welcoming the foot passengers with jolly tunes.

Having found our private cabin (with a curtain covering one wall, so that you can pretend it's an outside cabin really) we have a brief rest. By the time Steve's had a shower and we go on deck, they've already cast off and the boat is easing out of the dock. Martial music plays on the tannoy.

I watch the familiar banks of the Tyne slip by from the upper deck. Bystanders on the shore wave at us, and people on the boat wave back, just out of friendliness or perhaps a sense that that's what you do when a boat is setting off to sea. The landscape has changed much in the (almost) 8 years since I lived here though, with many new quayside flats and a couple of marinas replacing the working quays. Finally the ferry passes the long breakwater quay at South Shields, and I remember trekking out there many years ago to watch the Tall Ships Race set off from the Tyne in a magnificent flourish of white sails.

They don't let just anyone navigate the tidal waters of the Tyne, and once the ferry has passed the breakwaters, the pilot's launch draws alongside. It nuzzles close to the towering side of the ferry, and a civil servant in a high-vis vest walks out along the deck with a safety line. After a few moments, the pilot hops aboard from some door low down in the side of the ferry that I can't see from above. A few of the other onlookers cheer; the pilot gives a debonair wave, and goes into the cabin, as the launch turns back.

Steve and I have a pint, and then a long meal with a passable Chardonnay in the international buffet. We plan our route ahead somewhat: we've booked a Gite in the Vosges from Saturday, and we want to see a stage of the Tour de France on Thursday or Friday, but beyond tomorrow (Amsterdam) the rest is still fluid.

Tuesday: Tales of the City

I have a restless night, the hot dry air-conditioning blocking my sinuses. Finally I get up and have a bite of breakfast, while Steve prefers to sleep longer, as usual. I feel a little queasy and wonder if I should have drunk the boat's tap-water.

We disembark at Ijmuiden, and after a few tense minutes I re-adapt to driving on the right. We take a route through the city centre, for fun, as we have plenty of time. Having plenty of time to get places is kind of the point of this holiday.

In the late morning, while Steve rests again, I sit in Tropen park and type into Buffy, my laptop. A little terrier called Scooby (or Skubi, for all I know) and his pal run around investigating every other dog that happens by, and being called back by his owner. This goes on for half an hour. There is a slight breeze ruffling the lake, but it's a very warm wind. Trams rumble past. It's time to think about going sightseeing.

Straight after lunch, we stroll into the Centrum on foot. We look at the Buddhist temple, but I don't recognise most of the symbolism and I'm not even sure which branch of Buddhism it's from - Shintoh perhaps? We shelter from a sudden rain shower in a canalside cafe; it's full, because of the rain, and the other patrons are mostly obvious tourists, though some men sitting at the bar watching the Tour de France on the TV might be Dutch. I watch rivulets trickling off the edges of the umbrellas outside, wetting the uneven cobblestones, making them even more treacherous. We wander a little further after the rain has passed, then take the number 9 tram back to the hotel.

After a siesta, we meet up with Scott. He's looking well, a little tanned, and is still in exactly the same state of semi-baldness as last time I saw him, in 1993 (when I, contrastingly, had a thick head of hair and ponytail halfway down my back, long since gone). We walk to his flat and drink coffee and make a fuss of Tessa the soppy golden retriever. He explains why he loves Amsterdam so much: the acceptance, even welcoming of every minority and foible, and the wealth of social life stand in sharp contrast to his last home, on Cape Cod.

We go to his favourite Thai restaurant and have an excellent meal (I have prawns with cashew nuts) with an equally excellent Sancerre, followed by irish coffees. On the way back, he takes us on his standard tour of the red light district. It's quite something; like nothing else anywhere in the world. This follows from the fact that it's legal and regulated: all the power is in the hands of the women themselves, and the police hang around discreetly making sure that there's no trouble with the punters (and the tourists, of whom there are vastly more). Scott explains the economics; each woman hires a room for something in the order of 400 Guilders for a half day, and charges a minimum of 100G for 10-15 minutes. Thus the first hour pays for the day, and the rest is clear profit; after a couple of months she can retire and buy a nice house.

The atmosphere in the red light area seems happy and relaxed, unless it's just me projecting how I feel. Some women smile, and even tap the glass of their window "fishing" (as I think of it) for trade; others just sit and read a book. There are all shapes, sizes and colours, though most are young and thin. It seems to me that the sex industry here is more like the porn industry, in that it's those on the supply side who exploit those on the demand side. In this it's quite unlike the sex industry in most places. I find myself unstirred on a sexual level, though I see one or two strikingly pretty women; I find myself wishing I had a chance to get to know them, spend some time talking to them. But that kind of knowing them isn't on offer. I wonder if I'd have felt differently if I hadn't just had a large meal and sex a few hours earlier. Steve finds himself entirely uninterested, not very surprisingly; he really is gay. Scott, who's straight, is clearly interested in a couple of the girls, but hearing him talk about the hidden cameras everywhere (webcams; and he should know, working for a major ISP) I think it's more in the spirit of a connoisseur than a punter.

We walk back along a main route which is, however, very quiet at 11pm, and feels like a provincial little town. Amsterdam is strange; it really is tiny compared to the other major mediaeval trading cities. It has a seething centre and half a kilometre out from that, it's peaceful and quiet. Gangs of lads from England come here on stag nights to get legless and smoke ganja in the coffee shops, and new-age travellers from all over the world come to sit in circles in the parks and strum their guitars (some, very skilfully indeed). The traffic system is chaotic, with car lanes, cycle tracks and tram lines intersecting at every junction with no clear marking of priorities or even which is which; and most roads are badly potholed, and many are sectioned off for major repairs, with no sign of any actual work going on. It's as if the highway authority keeps on starting projects and then gets bored, moving on to another project and another, never finishing anything.

Wednesday: Four Guilders our Trespasses

I decide the best phrase to describe all this may be "happy-go-lucky". Like the spectrum of weirdos, freaks and ordinary folk who swirl through the city or live here, maybe Amsterdammers are just ultimately laid-back about their city. Scott thinks that the Amsterdam attitude comes from centuries of seeing other people continually coming through on their way to other places. Maybe they see that there are really more important things in life than getting uptight about the state of the roads. Are they too cool to have a fantastically efficient road network? We'll see more of it as we head down through the Netherlands today.

Dutch motorways are mostly only two lanes, and in many places limited to 100k - and most people seem to obey this, so they are rather tame by UK standards. Two groups of drivers are strikingly numerous, those who continually pull in and out of the slow lane to let faster cars past, and those (startlingly many of them) who tailgate aggressively. During the morning I see scores and scores of cars driving only 3-4 metres behind the next vehicle at 100k or more. I find this scary and mostly stick to the slow lane out of the way.

We strike off the motorways at lunchtime and meander through pretty rural roads, failing to spot any proper picnic areas. Eventually we head down a tiny side road which, surprisingly, turns out to be kilometre after kilometre of brick-paved road - who spent years building this, and more importantly, why? It leads to a sleepy dutch village with a square where we stop for our picnic. It has dykes and a pretty church, very picturesquely Dutch.

We've decided not to go too much further, only to Maastricht today. The original plan was to press on straight into France or at least Belgium but people keep telling me how nice Maastricht is. It turns out to be the antithesis of Amsterdam. Its ring road is dual carriageway and in good repair, and digital signs tell you exactly how many spaces the principal car parks have at this moment. We park in a pretty market square and find a room in a hotel which faces this. After watching the finish of today's Tour de France on TV, I stroll through the town, and find it clean, tidy and in good repair - how unlike Amsterdam! Between the market square and the cathedral are narrow, twisty mediaeval streets lined with newer buildings many stories high. The shops are posh - expensive jewellers, exclusive suits and high-class art objects abound (most unlike the forest of pseudo-African carvings in Amsterdam). It's as if the Dutch upper classes have moved here en masse simply because it's at the very, very other end of the country from Amsterdam.

A homeless person helps me understand how to use the parking meter, and I give him my remaining small change, four guilders.

We stroll a little more in the evening, having some trouble with menus that are only in Dutch, looking for somewhere with a decent vegetarian choice. By luck the restaurant we settle on turns out to be very good. I have gratineed seafood on a bed of pasta with a hint of basil, and we share a pretty good bottle of Cevennes red. The desserts are fabulous - Steve has a Grand Marnier mousse and I have tartufo which comes with a bitter chocolate sauce and an alcoholic sauce. I think both are better than any dessert I've ever had in the UK. It must be being so close to Belgium.

Thursday: Knowing a Country by the State of its Roads

With 10 hours largely undisturbed sleep, I finally catch up and feel properly fresh. We decide to have lunch in Luxembourg and then press on towards Nancy. Very quickly we're across the border in Belgium (the sign saying "Belgium" is in fact the only sign of a national border) and heading into the wooded hills and valleys. Belgian motorways appear to be in little better repair than Dutch ones, and still only two lanes. However, there are far fewer lorries today so it's faster going. Belgians seem to tailgate just as much as the Dutch so I stick to 110-120k and keep out of the way.

We scoot past Liege, which looks like an interesting city. Very hilly. The motorway goes through a couple of long tunnels right through the middle.

After a couple of hours of motorway, we decide we can't be bothered going into the city of Luxembourg after all. Luxembourg is therefore marked for us only by a very noticeable improvement in the quality of the road surface, and a quick stop at a service station. We stop for lunch once we're across the next border in France.

For a while we make good time on the French autoroute (three lanes at last), but after a while it becomes very congested, so we head off the main roads and go cross-country. I've picked out a town called Luneville as being close to where we want to be tomorrow, and we first head east to a little market town called Chateau-Salins, where we have a coffee. Then it's a twisty little road down to Luneville.

Luneville turns out to be a more important place than I imagined; although not large, it's a local centre and was the base of the Ducs d'Alsace, with a suitably impressive chateau. The hotel we picked out of the Michelin guide is full, but the tourist office books a different hotel for us. We check in and immediately decide that we like it so much that we'll stay two nights.

I have a walk round the town while Steve rests, and buy a cheap watch - I've been missing my Omega which I left in the UK to be repaired while I'm away. I'm pleased that the lady at the tourist office, the hotelier and the watch shop keeper all have conversations with me entirely in French - it irrirates me when people figure out I'm English and assume that I'm therefore a poor linguist. Maybe not too many English people visit this part of France - I certainly haven't noticed a single car with a GB plate on the roads at all since we got to the continent, which is very unusual in my experience of travelling in France in the summer.

I can't see why, because this is a very beautiful area, a dramatically rolling agricultural landscape with huge wheat fields just being harvested at the moment. These are interspersed with patches of woods, some obviously managed, others apparently wild mixed woodland.

I also like Luneville very much - it's a real lucky find. It's a very pretty town, well-kempt; neat, tall houses, many painted in pastel colours; large, pleasant tree-lined squares with lots of fountains. The weather is rainy at the moment but it must be gorgeous on hot evenings.

We eat at an italian restaurant, with good pizzas and a passable house rose, but indifferent service. The atmosphere is good, though, with the presence of another same-sex couple nearby assuring us of our good taste in restaurants. We sit on a balcony above the pizza oven, the pleasant aromas of which add to the experience. Back at the hotel, I irritate Steve by being very sleepy when he wanted my attention. A couple of hours later he irritates me back by still having the light on reading while I have difficulty staying asleep due to the heat and the extremely hard bed.

Friday: Been There, Done That, Bought the T-shirt

We take a wander round Luneville in the morning, admiring the huge formal gardens at the back of the chateau; half a dozen fountains and what must add up to a kilometre or so of colourful flower beds. It must be very labour-intensive to achieve such a tremendous effect.

We do some shopping for a picnic at a Monoprix and get into Leeloo to head up into the hills. Avoiding the roads which are already closed for the Tour de France, we climb up a steeply Z-bending road beside a mountain river, following two German cars. Finally we park where the road becomes solid with parked cars, and make the final pilgrimage on foot, to the highest point where the road over the Col du Donon crosses the mountain. The banner to show the riders this is the top is already in place, as are at least 500 spectators. However, there's still room and we set up our deckchairs and have a leisurely picnic of Boursin and a Nutella-like spread on our Baguette, dressed salad, fromage frais, with a Yoplait to drink, rounded off with a little Poulain chocolate.

As lunchtime passes, excitement mounts and more and more people leave their picnics to line the road. Official Tour de France cars and motorcycle police pass from time to time, and a few gendarmes have the unenviable job of trying to keep the growing crowds from completely blocking the road.

For half an hour or more, vehicles of the publicity caravan pass by, handing out or throwing promotional freebies of one sort or another - pens, keyrings, packs of cards, giant hands to wave, and many more. Some of them are like carnival floats - giant cheeses, water bottles and so on. Children and adults alike scramble for the goodies. Only the official Tour de France Boutique vans actually stop. I buy the official T-shirt.

After the publicity caravan is past, tension rises as the crowd grows to well over 1000 (besides who knows how many more down the side of the hill). At last, the hovering helicopter filming the lead riders grows closer and louder, until it's almost overhead.

Suddenly, there is the sound of cheering from down the hill and we join in. In a flash, one cyclist is past us, the winner of the climb. He's followed a few seconds later by three pursuers, at a speed so fast I can't even read their numbers, despite their having just raced up a road which climbs 400 metres in little more than 1km as the crow flies. You can't help but be impressed. Then they're past, and four or five team cars, with rows of spare bicycles on the roof, sweep past at what must be 40k, only inches from the press of the crowd.

The wait, which is apparently over three minutes, seems like a few seconds and then a chasing group of riders dashes past. We cheer their efforts. More team cars, one or two stragglers, then the peloton, the main body of riders, pour past. Their speed after such a steep hill is incredible, but most of them don't even look unduly stressed. I'm also struck by how thin they all are in their skin-tight lycra - there's not a gram of spare fat between the lot of them.

One or two more stragglers pass, including (I later learn) Britain's David Millar, injured in a crash a few days earlier. Then over a dozen more team cars, and a Tour van which is used to pick up those who abandon. Then it's all over. The crowd, which had been thickly lining the road on both sides, turns shapeless and surges in all directions.

We head back to the car and spend half an hour in a traffic jam of cars, bikes and people. With at least 500 cars parked along this one side road (one of three or four), the crowd on the Col du Donon, one of the remotest points on today's 200km route, one day out of three weeks, must have numbered at least 5000. So the number of people who must turn out to see the Tour de France going past must be in the millions. All for a few seconds while the riders flash past? That's astonishing in its own right. I think about this on the way back to the hotel. Steve asks me if I'm disappointed, and I say no. But I'm not sure exactly what I do feel. It doesn't seem like it should be a satisfying thing, seeing those bicycle heroes for just a few fleeting moments. But I'm sure it has renewed my interest in the sport. I'm more convinced than ever that there's no other sport which comes close in its combination of team and individual tactics and athleticism. Having watched it on TV every year for well over 10 years, there is no question that I'm glad I've now seen the event in the life.

We eat at an "Oriental French" restaurant close to the hotel. I have salmon with a very interesting red wine sauce. The waitress suggests a Chablis as being more suitable than the Vin Gris I asked her about, and it does indeed go very well. We have a cognac digestif as well. Crossing the road back to the hotel we see fireworks in the sky. I have a vivid dream about having to take over some theatre lighting (one of my recurrent dreams) while the operator goes to set off some fireworks. I realise on waking that everyone in the dream was an ex of mine. Decide to avoid cognac.

Saturday: Le Joli Val d'Ajol

We take our time getting up, partly because breakfast is served later at the weekend, and partly because we haven't got too far left to go. We eventually check out around 11. The hotelier seems very pleased when I mention how much I liked Luneville. Once out of the town, Steve navigates us down a tiny agricultural road, single-track but still - this being France - well maintained with a good surface and no potholes. It winds through unfenced fields of crops, and here and there through woodland. It's all ravishingly beautiful in the sunshine. There is no sight of other vehicles or houses until we reach the next little village, Seranville. Here we follow a larger road for a while, one that we can see was used by the Tour de France yesterday, judging by all the slogans and riders' names written on the tarmac.

We head on down to Epinal, the major town of the region, where we do our shopping for the next few days at a Carrefour hypermarket. Then we get onto the main road down the Moselle and picnic at an Aire soon after. The French, Belgians and Dutch are all represented in the car park but still no Brits other than us.

Having plenty of time, we soon strike off the main road again up into the mountains. The road twists and turns down the side of a steep valley, so thickly lines with Pine trees that we can't see anything, until on the last, shallower descent to the valley floor, we come out of the forest and look out on the beautiful fields and town of the Val d'Ajol, the houses nestling around a church spire in the middle of the valley. As we drive through the village we see stalls being set up, no doubt for festivities this evening as it's Bastille Day. It's an exquisitely beautiful and peaceful spot.

We drive up to the head of the valley and turn up another steep, twisty road. Now we're in the Parc Regional des Ballons des Vosges. Although we haven't seen rain, it has evidently rained here within the last few minutes, as there are puddles on the road and the forest is giving off the delicate fragrance of newly wet pine and bracken. This is mixed with the tantalising smell of the ripe strawberries on the back seat of the car.

At the top of the hill, the Col du Mont de Fourche, there is a break in the forest and we're afforded our first real view of the Vosges themselves, huge mountains, but mostly rolling and rounded and tree-lined, not like the steep peaks of the Alps, where I've been many times. Between them lie huge, sweeping wooded valleys, with tiny villages visible here and there in breathtaking isolation. We descend into the next valley, pass through a couple of the little villages and are shortly at our Gite. It's entirely on its own, but the owner's representative comes from La Lanterne to give us the keys and show us the ways of the stove and washing machine.

It's an old (second half of the 19th century) farmhouse, with some doorways so low I have to stoop greatly to get through them. The habitable rooms are at one side of the building, with more than half of the structure simply a huge barn-like space under the great roof. My first thought is that given time, this vast wasted space could be turned into a tremendously luxurious house, with easily five bedrooms with en-suites. The DIY I've been doing at home must be going to my head. It all smells rather musty, so we open the windows. A soft rain is falling gently outside; there is no other sound. We're a long way from anywhere here.

Steve cooks sweet pepper soup followed by rainbow trout, accompanied by the same brand of Vin Gris that we didn't have in the restaurant yesterday. The waitress was right, it's not perfect with fish; it's slightly sweet. We play chess and go to bed with the sound of rain trickling from the gutters.

Sunday: Faire rien et rien a faire

We sleep in, and get up after noon. I write for an hour or two before a late lunch. It's still raining.

In the afternoon, I go looking for non-essential provisions and am reminded with chagrin that nothing is open on Sunday afternoons in France: not shops, not even petrol stations. Nothing must stand in the way of the all-afternoon Sunday lunch. It's a civilised country.

Dinner is salad with mustard vinaigrette, penne with vegetable sauce, and chocolate mont blancs. The tomatoes in the vegetable sauce seem incredibly tasty. Were they really fresher or tastier than the ones I regularly buy in England, or is there something in the air in France that makes food taste better?

Monday: Generally bright with scattered showers, more persistent ennui later

Another lie in, though not as long. Sun shines in at the bedroom window, which doesn't have curtains. I drive down to Melisey and pick up some leaflets from the tourist office, and some supplies from the Supermarket. The milk is "micro-filtered", not pasteurised or UHT, and tastes great.

We go for a short walk between showers and decide to go further tomorrow. I do a little writing. Later, between more showers, I sit outside in the sun and feel frustrated about not having enough new ideas to go on with my current novel. There is no sound but the birds in the forest over the road, and occasionally a slight breeze rustles the red roses trained up the corner of the cottage. I get the laptop out and do a bit more tinkering with old work.

Trout parcels for dinner, with seared peppers, mushrooms with onions and garlic, aubergine and rice, plus a Cotes de Provence Rose from the supermarket which was only 16 Francs but is excellent with the trout. Must get some more to take home. We play chess some more; my lead increases to 6-3.

Tuesday: Breaking Out the Factor 15 Sunblock

Up earlier. I drink my second coffee of the morning outside in the sun on the terrace. Soon I'm forced back inside by the strength of the sun. I read indoors and we have an early lunch and play chess. Still no ideas for the book. This is frustrating, as I was hoping the peace and quiet would enable me to write. I really want to, but my head is just empty.

In the afternoon we walk by the back lanes to a nearby village, Ecromagny. It's so quiet here, and there are so many little lakes scattered everywhere I can see why it's called the Plateau des Mille Etangs - there really might be a thousand. The trees are reflected in the still waters. Got another good look at the Ballons des Vosges. They really are all rounded, and tree-covered. Not as dramatic as the Alps, since there's no tree-line or snow-line, they still have a kind of placid grandeur from being so enormous, and they valleys between them so huge and quiet, filled with forests dotted with quiet farming villages.

When we get back I watch a couple of hours of the Tour de France on the TV - a dramatic finish on the Alp d'Huez, and a stunning victory by Lance Armstrong of the US Postal team. He comes from 6 minutes behind the leader on the road to finish 4 minutes ahead of him.

My chess lead increases to 8-4, though Steve isn't playing his best due to severe hayfever.

Wednesday: Finding a Way Round Writer's Block

We drive into Lure to shop at a pharmacy and supermarket. Steve's new hayfever drug makes him drowsy and he sleeps all afternoon.

I go for a walk, looking for the source of the river Lanterne which is supposed to be nearby. I don't find it. I explore logging tracks in the woods and come across a big, quiet lake, very still. There is a slight shower for a few minutes. I'm dry, under the trees, but the lake makes the most beautiful, incredibly high-pitched hiss as the rain patters onto it. After a few minutes all is still again.

I phone my Mum on the way back. She hears the clanging bells of the goats I walk past. Tell her that we've decided to go to Strasbourg on Saturday. Before I'm back, there is a sudden, very heavy shower and I get drenched.

I get depressed for a while about not having the inspiration to write. I try to think of an idea for something new but can't think of anything that hasn't been done before. Adventure stories for boys. Relationship-oriented narratives for girls. Wacky sci-fi ideas, none of them big enough to carry a novel and most of them probably used up in short stories in the 60s.

Eventually I try a different tack, meta-work, and work on the plot for the current novel rather than the book itself. This works well and I come up with some good twists (essential ingredient as it's supposed to be a spy thriller). I feel better.

I watch more Tour de France on the TV. Steve wakes up and we have soup, followed by pizza and cheap red wine. Chess lead reduced to 9-6. Then we talk, and have one of those pointless arguments in bed that we have when we're both tired.

Thursday: Shopping and Drinking

Once again, sleep most of the morning. I don't know whether I'm sleeping so much more than usual (10-11 hours a day rather than 7-8) because I needed to catch up, or just because the bed's so hard and uncomfortable that I'm not getting good quality sleep.

In the afternoon I have a pleasant drive to Vesoul. The RN19 road is big enough to be quite fast but goes through some dramatic countryside, sweeping wooded valleys (in one is a village called Dampvalley - honestly). Seems like a nice town but I don't have time to explore it properly. I shop at an E.Leclerc hypermarket, buying stuff to take back to the UK. Among lots of other wine I can't resist a bottle of my favourite champagne, at half the UK price.

Dinner is frozen fish and lots of vegetables, with another Provence Rose (very good) and some more of the cheap red. I sip some wine outside for a while, feeling depressed in an end-of-holidayish kind of way, although we actually have 4 days left. Steve sobers up inside. I win 2 more games of chess despite that I've been drinking all evening and Steve is sober. Hah. I think it's now 12-6.

Friday: More of Not Much

Sleep later than ever. Read. Watch a couple of hours of the Tour on TV - another exciting mountain stage. Eat a strange leftovers type meal: spanish omelette with lentils. Happily there were Glaces Mystere left too.

After a walk with Steve, we do the packing and cleaning. We find the cleaning irritating. Wonder if there's some form of holiday where you can shop and cook for yourself, but someone else does all the cleaning, changes the sheets etc.

A final game of chess leaves us at 14-7 with 2 stalemates.

Saturday: Sunny Strasbourg

Having done all the work last night, the car is packed and ready to go before 9.30, and we wait around for a quarter of an hour waiting for Madame V. to arrive and return the deposit and so on. We drive off into a morning bluer and sunnier than we've seen all week.

I admit to having been depressed/frustrated at times during the week which upsets Steve. The changeable weather didn't help (ironically, it's sunny again today). It seems I need to be really alone to write. So the week has achieved almost nothing beyond a rest from work and everything. This upsets Steve a bit and all morning he puts my favourite music on the CD player, rather than his own choices, to help cheer me up. He can be a sweetie. He also chooses an interesting route.

We take a road up the valley above Melisey, its sweeping, steep, thickly wooded sides typical of glacial valleys. The road rises and then drops into the next valley where we stop at a pretty town by a lake, Gerardmer, which reminds us strongly of Windermere. We have a mid-morning coffee in a touristy cafe, then shop for our lunch. I see my first car GB plate since Amsterdam.

The road begins to rise steeply and twist and turn along the valley side, though not in crazy Z-bends - it's a fairly major road. We climb higher and higher, going briefly under an outcrop of rock where tourists are stopping to look at the sheer rocks. Finally, the road reaches the top of the pass - the Col de la Slucht at a staggering 1200m. Higher than anywhere in the UK, let alone any major road. Steve opens and re-seals a water bottle to hear the hiss of pressurised air escaping. The road winds past a small, intense tourist trap with cafes, a ski lift to the very top of the mountain and so on; then emerges into the valley beyond.

Arms of the mountain drop away sharply, still covered with forest, and between them, ravines plunge hundreds and hundreds of metres down, with trees clinging even to near-vertical sheer rock faces. The sense of scale from the huge vertical distances so close to hand horizontally is breathtaking. It makes the 900m hills I've climbed in England (from foothills of maybe 500m) look very gentle. The vibrant dark green colour of the trees covering it all - bare rock is only visible between the trees on the sheerest slopes - add another dimension giving the scene a mysterious, alien feel.

The road winds down the side of the valley steeply, but still with few hairpin bends - I'm not using the brakes nearly as much as coming down from the Col du Donon. Traffic is very light and the day is still dry and very sunny, thankfully. It leads through a valley-floor town, where the architecture is noticeably different to that in the Vosges; it must be the German influence, for this is Alsace. Soon the valley opens out into the floor of the Rhine valley. Hills on the far side of the Rhine, in Germany, are hazily visible in the distance.

We drive through Colmar, which Steve says reminds him of Clarksburg in West Virginia - houses of homogenous size and architecture clustered on a steep slope round a church, and then a long flat section where motels and shops cluster around each intersection of the road. Only here, vinyards stretch out across the valley floor and up into the foothills of the Vosges to the west.

We find ourselves on the autoroute, the fast way to Strasbourg. We decide not to stop for lunch until we're there, though we take a meandering back route into the city, past the airport. We're scouting around for a feel of what it would be like to live here. We're thinking that a farmhouse in the Vosges or somewhere further north (around Luneville perhaps) for the weekends, while working in a city like Strasbourg during the week might be a good way to live.

We stop in the city centre and pick up a hotel map; one mobile phone call reserves us a room. The Gite only had a shower, and I've been gradually missing baths more over the week, so I splash out (as it were) on an expensive room with a bath. We check in, and picnic in the room. Turning on the TV, it turns out to be an exciting moment in the Tour de France - Ullrich just failed to take a bend and came off - so I watch until the end of the stage, with Armstrong taking the yellow jersey finally. Steve dozes, having slept very badly last night.

I wander around Strasbourg for a couple of hours. It's very pretty, with a beautiful, peaceful river running through it, but also very touristique, especially around the cathedral. That said, lots and lots of people have a dog with them, suggesting they might be local. I look in some shops and spend some time outside a cafe which I choose purely on the stunning looks of the waiter.

I return to the hotel and have a long, long bath. It's a spa bath and it makes my Body Shop bath gel go wild and spill out bubbles onto the floor. I love having the soles of my feet massaged by the jets of water (to say nothing of other bits). Eventually I drag myself out and we go eat. We happen to choose a Cantonese restaurant. My starter is the most interesting spring rolls I've ever had - cold, with mint leaves in. Delicious. We have a nice local Pinot Noir blanc with the meal.

We watch a bit of the Son Et Lumiere playing on the front of the cathedral, which I quite like in my half-bottle-of-wine-mellow state, but which bores Steve and he gets grumpy. For some reason I'm feeling tired and sad, and with him tired and grumpy we have another stupid argument back at the hotel, the details of which are best forgotten.

Sunday: Four Countries, Food in Three

After a poor night's sleep (too hot with window closed, too noisy with it open), Steve lies in while I go down for breakfast. I take Buffy and write at the breakfast table. Breakfast is top quality - croissants and pain au chocolat that were really baked this morning, orange juice and mixed fruits and good coffee. I spend an hour over it.

We set off just before noon, and head off up the Peage (direction Paris, distance 480km). For a short cut we head into Germany at Saarbrucken and take autobahns and main roads north. There's a long, slow diversion where the autobahn is closed for repairs, and I don't spot the turning back onto the autobahn in time, hitting the brakes and stopping just past it. The German car behind me, which is also going onto the autobahn, actually stops and waits for me to reverse in front of it to get back on track. I've never known a driver be so helpful in the UK, especially to a foreign car.

This part of Germany is a lot like England's south downs, only much, much bigger. When we come over into the valley of the Mosel (after passing by the towns of Perl and Borg), it's a vast, enormous sweep of gently sloping farmland. Today it's baking in summer heat; as we cross the Mosel into Luxemburg, Leeloo's temperature sensor reads 30 and I'm glad of the A/C and tinted glass.

Having skipped it last week, this time we drive into the centre of Luxembourg and park in an underground car park. We wander around the streets a little, some of which I recognise from my previous visit (one day in the late 80s). We settle on a place to have lunch at a cafe in the Place d'Armes. We sit under a sun canopy and eat seafood. A little dappled sunlight reaches through the trees, and it's really very pleasant, especially when the band in the bandstand stops playing crowd-pleaser film music and goes home.

We leave Luxemburg and re-enter Belgium, and immediately have our memories of the bad road surfaces refreshed; after days of driving on smooth tarmac, 100m into Belgium you're back onto noisy concrete. Further on it's tarmac, but covered in a patchwork of repairs that judder the car constantly. However, this seems to be limited to southern Belgium; as we get close to Bruxelles, the roads improve and become three-lane and fast. We had been thinking of going there, but I've been before so we decide to go a bit further, to Antwerpen.

We soon find a decent hotel, in a tower block, which affords a good view of the city skyline. It looks to be a large and interesting place, with lots of church spires, and a great deal of new development. A pity we won't have longer here. We go out for a snack, but get tempted by an indonesian restaurant (and that's even before I saw the indonesian waiter, who's scrumptious - tall, goatee, little round glasses, baggy trousers). There's a lot of the menu we don't understand, as it's in Flemish, but we engage the waiter to explain it all.

I guess Antwerp isn't as touristy as most of the cities we've been to, or at least this part of it isn't. We sit outside the restaurant in the Dageraadplaats, a small square lined with cafes, and almost nobody looks like a tourist; they're dressed casually, even scruffily, and half of them have kids, who play on the slide and amongst the trees. Some teenagers practise basketball with apparently endless energy, though before we finish eating our very nice vegetarian indonesian food, they're replaced by younger kids kicking a football around. From time to time it goes among the tables of the cafes but people are indulgent. It's getting dark, but as everywhere in Europe (except the UK), even very small kids are allowed to stay up and potter among the tables as parents socialise.

I finish my Stella as Steve has a coffee and a few drops of rain fall. Some of the cafe owners start to move their tables under cover and we turn in. An enormous thunderstorm breaks out around us in the night, disturbing Steve but I'm too tired to wake up and doze through what seems like hour after hour of it.

Monday: Closing the Loop

I have breakfast at the hotel but it's not up to yesterday's standard. We look at our bits and pieces of coinage from the various countries we've been through and wonder what to do with it. Roll on next year, when they'll all be swept away for the single currency, the Euro. Hopefully soon Britain will join too and there'll be no money-changing to do the sort of travelling we've done on this holiday.

Driving north from Antwerp we're soon in the Netherlands again. I stop for petrol, and Steve has an ice cream for breakfast and a nice cheese sandwich, and I have a can of Red Bull. We drive across the flat Dutch countryside, over bridges and under some tunnels while skirting Rotterdam/Europoort. Then we take a coastal route past Den Haag and up back to Ijmuiden. We're early for the ferry, so we have a mid-afternoon meal at one of a line of fish-specialising restaurants close to the docks. I have calamari which is pretty good; Steve's cod is as beautiful and tender as any I've ever tasted.

We wait in line at the dock, board the ferry and find our cabin. This time we stand on deck for an hour, and watch them finish loading (caravans, coaches and a couple of reels of fibre optics), cast off, and reverse the ship out of the dock. Once out into clear water they turn the ship round and the continent rapidly diminishes into the distance. We go in for coffee, and read for a while.

Steve goes out again for another coffee around 11, and then comes back and asks me to get dressed again and come up on deck. I do, and am rewarded by an amazingly beautiful sight. It's a balmy, clear evening - there is still light in the sky in the west - and the North Sea is flatter than I've ever seen any sea before. It's glassy-smooth, with small wind-ruffled patches only here and there. A crescent moon, low in the sky, is reflected in a pale yellow stripe across the water towards us. Further north and higher in the sky, Mars glints redly. Out across the sea, a couple of other ships are visible by their lights; the smooth black sheen of water stretches out into darkness, meeting the deepest-blue sky in a smudgy haze of distance. It's warm, quiet and peaceful. I'm with my lover and we're being taken home; tomorrow I'll get mugged by my jubilant labrador and we'll reach our own house by the evening. For now there's nothing to do but enjoy the moment, surrounded by the silent sea. It's the end of the holiday, but tonight this is still holiday and we're still travellers, gazing at the wonders of the world as we pass them by.