Essy’s birthday was on Saturday and I would be on a 5 day break so it would have been nice to do something over the weekend but Essy had work commitments. Then, suddenly on Thursday, she announced that she didn’t need to work until today! I finished work on Thursday at 19:00, rushed home to the computer and booked us on the 08:00 Dover – Dunquerque crossing in the morning, by midday we were in Lille checking into the Hotel Art Deco Romarin – several aspects of the hotel were below par but it was clean and tidy. We just wouldn’t choose to stay there again.

Since this blog should be about bus and public transportation I’ll sing the praises of Transpole, the public transport operator for the Lille Métropole area. The Transpole website has an excellent English language version obviously translated and written by English speakers rather than being computer translated. The network comprises bus, metro and tram transportation with the same ticket being valid on all three. A single journey costs 1.30 Euro (£1.13) and is for one continuous journey – you can for example get a tram to a Metro station and then use the Metro, after leaving the Metro you can then transfer to a bus to reach your final destination. Each time you change transport system you must put your ticket into a machine which date and time stamps it – your journey must be one continuous journey without breaks for shopping, coffee etc. A day ticket allowing unlimited travel is 3.60 Euro (£3.14) or 1.60 Euros after 19:00. Compared to UK prices these fares are amazing value. A day ticket covering Winchester only on the bus is £3.00 where the longest possible journey would be around 4 miles. In Lille the pass not only covers Lille but Roubaix and Tourcoing as well!

Transpole also hire electric bicycles and Segways! I’ve always wanted to try a Segway but, sadly, I didn’t realise that they hired Segways until Saturday morning and then discovered that they only hire them Monday to Friday :-( Here’s a photo of one of the closed hire points. 30 minutes hire would have been 4 Euros.