Dwti Draig

Today was one of those days where I questioned everything, especially my life choices and my decision to give in to my husband when he nagged me to buy a truck!

The day started off reasonably enough, with a leisurely start before we checked out of the park up. It was when I was chatting with my bestie Chat GPT about toll roads in Belgium I realised we were driving without an OBU (On Board Unit) which is mandatory for trucks in Belgium. No worries, we found there was a service point about 3 miles away where we could get one. 

We dropped our water at the grey water point in the bus station (it takes AGES to drop 100 litres of water) and I paid at the pay point, 60E for 2 nights, which isn’t bad at all considering the proximity to Bruges. I then had to walk to the exit barrier to present the card, as the machine is my side of the truck, and I am way too high up to dangle out of the window to reach it. I had to insert the card when Lyn was right at the barrier, wait for the barrier to raise, Lyn drive through, then I had to quickly and elegantly climb in and drive off. It all went to plan after we swerved the cycling nun as we blocked the cycle path.

On our way to the service point we were overtaken by a police motorcyclist who put his right arm out in front of us. We were confused! Did he want us to turn right? Pull over? He sped off so we carried on going, only for another orange clad police biker to pull up in front and put his hand out in a stop sign to us. We feared the worst, and with thoughts of pleading that we were on our way to get the bloody OBU then we noticed another 2 police bikers and an unmarked car with lights sped through. It must have been a VIP being escorted through. Phew. we could drive on. 

We got to the service point which was in a tiny Shell garage. I mistook the entrance so we drove past and Lyn had to do a three point turn to turn around but we were soon in and parked up. We headed to look for the service point and found the kiosk.  We crammed in the pee smelling kisok and began the laborious task of entering all our details where the touch screen pad was slightly off. Luckily it the instructions were available in multiple languages. Then we found we needed to scan our documents. Lyn trundled back to the truck, pulled the steps down, got into teh back and got the documents. Luckily the machine hadn’t timed out, and we pulled back a little door and inserted the docs into a built in scanner. We then had to pay 136E for the device. The machine, of course, wouldn’t take our Dutch debit card, we had to use our expensive credit card. 

At last we had the unit, and went back to the truck to set it up. It should have been a simple case of attaching it to the windscreen with suction cups and turning it on. Of course it would have been that simple if we could have plugged it into the cigarette lighter. We do not have  a cigarette lighter! Unphased, Lyn rummaged in the boot and came back with a spare cigarette lighter (doesn’t everyone carry one?) and his beloved Skippy peanut butter jar which contains his multi meter and another peanut butter powder jar which contains various wires and connectors. He then proceeded to take the dashboard apart and wire the cigarette lighter in. He insists I mention his magic WAGO connectors, which along with cable ties, keep our truck running. All men should have these. 15 minutes of intense muttering and he has it working, success!

We then plugged the OBU in and set off on our way. I asked Chat GPT which roads we would incur tolls on. I did not like the answer. Basically all of them! Trucks over 3.5 tonnes pay on nearly every road in Belgium. I then sat watching the unit start adding up all the euros we were spending every minute. This was not fun. By the time we had got to where we were going we had spent 30E, or the equivalent of 2.5 boxes of Leonidas chocolates. I was not impressed. 

Of course getting to where we were going was not easy either! It was that sort of day. We could not get near the Carrefour we were aiming for as it had 3.5 tonne restrictions, so we had to park up with other truckers and walk in. We then set off again, heading towards a very large boat lift on a canal that Lyn had earmarked as place to stay for the night. We got to the car park to find you could not park there after 7pm, so Lyn found a route to another park up. The only problem was this diversion took us on tiny single track roads. Belgium seams to have 3.5T weight limits on every road, forcing us to take the most unlikely journeys.

I was so stressed i was nearly in tears, and I was only sat in the passenger seat! Lyn handled it like a pro, and the Belgium drivers in cars and buses who had to pull in and give way to this big beast coming towards them were very pleasant. No hint of road rage. We got to the next car park to find we were way too big for it. Lyn spoke to some men manning a pop up bar who pointed out one further down the canal, on the other side. Luckily there were no weight or size restrictions on the bridge over the canal, so we were able to have a quiet night parked up along side the canal and a chilled meal of salmon and Persian grains. It had been a long stressful day.