Day 5 - Brussels to Cambrai - Monday 1st September

A great start to the day with the sun being out and 10 miles of ground to recover.

As I had sat up until the early ours of the morning planning the following days route we managed to get an early get away at 0845

The parks and areas around the Capital were very impressive, although we were strongly advised to work round the City and keep away from the centre.

We headed south west out of Brussels where Craig tried to find a bike shop that was open – see below.. not much initial success but a closed bike shop warning about testez.

We cracked onto Waterloo, Waterloo where would I be without water and a loo lol!... ahhhh... you can guess... the ABBA tunes came out lol! However....it wasn't a battle to get out of this place.

Eventually Craig and I found a bike shop and put our bikes in for repair… Craig getting new bolt for rack and me getting my derailer bent back into shape… young lads first day on the job and two Scotsmen drop in!

The hills were back and it wasn't long before we were on the rolling hills heading in the general direction of Mons. We bypassed the City and continued on completing 50 miles before lunch and into France.

We stopped at a tabac in a little village called... eh.. I can't remember but its on the N563/D932

So the lunch menu discussion was interesting. "Chips please" The waitress translation was "There aff" We worked our way through the entire menu and got pretty much the same answer for everything.

Eventually we went for the chefs special, which was a Biffi Bar (a peperanni in a stale role - think they are kept for nucear events) and Wotsit type snacks. The food was poor but the beer was great.

That is Alan's arm going for the Wotsits btw

Refreshed we headed onto Cambrai which seemed a relentless road.

The sun was out for most of the day and we saw temps on various garage forecourts of 25 degrees.

Despite Phil's hope of stopping for another coffee, it never happened in the next 40 miles and we got into Cambrai at the back of 6 to our Premier Classe resort. Bunk beds and a plastic all in one cubicle for shower and etc etc etc

A quick turnaround and we were off for steaks at the local restaurant. They did us proud. Monster steak and chips for 16 euros. Along with the chat from the guys it was a fantastic end to a great day.

So in summary today was best summarised by saying it was a lovely sunny day, 93 miles cycled, all back on track, 4 countries visited, 3 out of 5 capitals visited and finally, and most importantly, relax and let your fellow cyclists stop and check where you're going even though you know your are right  ;-)

Time to switch the lights off at our first Premier Classe...