1st June to 15th July 2024

For Europe’s sports fans June and July are bumper months. Tennis, cycling, cricket (ok, not much of Europe for cricket), golf and football (soccer for Americans) and other lesser known odds and ends. Then of course. there’s more to come for everyone with the Olympic Games about to start in France. Brings on a sweat just thinking about it.

It has been football that’s aroused most hysteria – Euros 2024. In England there’s been obsessive coverage and, though I like watching the odd game and don’t wish to kill others’ joy, it is faintly embarrassing to witness this level of national mania. Hysteria has now cooled following defeat. Never mind, next time maybe.

There was also a UK General Election which, at the time, generated almost as much interest as the football, but since recently visiting France, Belgium and Germany I find most people outside Britain have long lost interest in British politics – ever since we cast ourselves adrift with the great big Brexit folly.

I happened to be in Dortmund a week before the semi-final football match there (England vs. Netherlands). The German hosts were incredibly organised with clear signs all over the city, a green carpet to guide spectators across town and information all over the place.

But I’d gone there to visit former sailing crew, Laura and family, rather than for football. It was wonderful to see them and their enchanting young daughter. 

We all have periods of life that seem busier and more fun than most; spells when nearly every day is interesting, exciting and unusual. I guess prime ministers, presidents, and other powerful or important folk are always pretty busy and excited (and perhaps having fun).

My life isn’t normally particularly eventful. It’s sometimes definitely uneventful, even a bit dull. But recently it has been a happy, busy and sociable spell. Apart from meeting sailing friends along the way, there has been my sister’s birthday party in Somerset, visit to two sons in Bristol and then after sailing east up the English Channel, trip to Dortmund from Dunkirk, courtesy of seven trains (French, Belgian, German) and a bus each way.

Before wizzing to Dortmund by train, Henrietta and I visited lots of familiar UK South Coast spots, sailed again with friend Andrew, then briefly Brighton, Dover and over to Calais. But you don’t really want a tedious account of all that. Suffice to say, there were lots of highlights. 

The small and excellent museum in Dunkirk that commemorates the troops’ evacuation in 1940 is superb, enough to bring tears to your eyes. Well worth a visit if you’re nearby.

From Dunkirk it was a short sail on east to Ostend. If you have been spoiled with the beauty of the Devon and Cornwall coastlines of England, you, like me, would find the stretch from Calais to Ostend to be pretty horrible. It’s a flat, busy, industrial area with huge ships, fast ferries and sandbanks dividing channels of fast flowing tidal currents, and onshore a mass of chimneys, factories and steam or smoke belching into the sky. You have to stay alert and there’s no time to make coffee, let alone doze off.

Then, at the end of a long day, I entered Ostend in a strong wind to discover we must go through a lock and three swing or lifting bridges to get to my berth, stopping three times for traffic lights to let me go on. Such manoeuvres are no joke for single handed boating and I was happy eventually to reach a peaceful berth in the middle of the city.

Ostend was a good place from which to visit the seething-with-tourists Brugge (station is next to the marina) and, next day, the West Flanders battlefields of WW I, neither of which I’d ever done before. 

In Brugge I was one of the 10-12 million tourists who arrive each year. It felt like it – though I enjoyed a guided walk and learnt to make my own Belgian chocolates (very yummy but rather misshapen).

In harsh and sobering contrast I visited next day the grave of a great uncle, one of the early Flying Corps pilots who’d died in 1916 aged 23, buried along with over ten thousand others in Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, overwhelmingly young, who were sacrificed in the cause of misplaced patriotism. 

Later that day on to the Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres. Such a day, immersed in thoughts of man-made pain and grief, must leave you acutely aware, if you weren’t already, of your good fortune in living a hundred years later.

Then, on leaving Ostend, Henrietta and I retraced steps down-Channel, and after stops off Dungeness nuclear power station and next night Seven Sisters white cliffs, followed by Chichester Harbour, I now find myself rolling wildly off Swanage, a popular English seaside resort, while rain pours out of leaden skies. It’s too rough and windy to land, so time to write this update!