For some reason, our stay in Hannover was rather cheap. Perhaps this made up in some way for the lack of things to do there. The drive on to Antwerp was going to be long. Very long. We'd estimated at least four hours, probably more. As we were leaving Germany today, I had my last bit of fun on the unrestricted autobahn and hit a new top speed - 224kmh or 139mph. We crossed from Germany to .nl after lunch, spent an hour driving across the Netherlands, then hit Belgie. It's worthy of a note that if you're looking for the Novotel in Mechelen, don't trust the GPS as it's not possible to drive to it. Instead of putting Van Beethovenstraat 1 in, put Guldenstraat in instead, and it'll get you to the car park. The Novotel is next to the Match supermarket - it's entirely possible to drive by it and miss it, so keep an eye out for the Match sign.

The area is absolutely gorgeous. We went and had tea at a place called De Kraanbrug which is rather top notch, before doing some shopping at the aforementioned supermarket, then spending well over an hour wandering around the streets. The Stella advert with that pub in it which looks like it's in a glorious part of southern France or somesuch? It's exactly like that. A warm night that we were able to just slowly wander around the area and admire the place.

Back to the hotel then for the end to a pretty damn good evening.

Tomorrow - we're probably going to head back early. It's about 2 hours to Calais from here, so it looks like we're going to do the whole lot in one fell swoop - from here back to North Wales. It's going to be a long slog, but with Sioned still being a bit under the weather, it'll probably be for the best.