Having enjoyed a fine dinner after our trip to the Menin Gate the night before, we faced very murky weather on the way to La Coupole, a V2 site near St Omer. It is a very impressive undergound facility with 7kms of railway line and fortunately never became fully operational, although many V2 rockets were dropped on London. Some good came out of Hitler's rocket programme - the American and Russion Space ventures were both founded on the German rocket engineering from the V1 (Doodlebug) and the V2 (also a precursor to the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, which hopefully will never be used).
After visiting it, we headed for the Tunnel terminal, a bit late because I had decided to watch a film that was longer than anticipated and held up our departure, so we missed our train, not in itself a problem normally as there is a 1 hour leeway and we were only minutes late, but there had been, or still was, a problem in the Tunnel due to a breakdown. It did us an opportunity for a bite and a coffee. Leaving later might also have had a bonus, because some heavy rain and high winds had moved across UK while we were stuck in France and, although it was still very windy on the motorway back home, with lots of spray to make it rather unpleasant, we probably missed the worst of it. It was quite cold too, but the traffic was relatively light, so it wasn't too problematic, but we were glad when it had finished.
So, it was a good educational tour with lots of laughs and good fun within the group. We also found our quarter mile long convoy of bikes cheered or tooted at by passing motorists and pedestrians, and we provided entertainment and photographic opportunity to others as we got ready for the off at our hotels in the morning!
Jean rather took to the whole experience. So much so that she is going to the 105th Harley-Davidson Anniversary rally at Minehead at the beginning of July! It therefore seemed appropriate to enrol her as an Associate Member of the Harley Owner Group - Soon, she AM HOG!
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