We were at the market in Lille before three o’clock – while it was still light There was a large ferris wheel in one square and the market was just a little further on.

My first impression of the market was that it was much smaller than I had been expecting, with very few stalls. But once I started walking round it wasn’t really that small.  The stalls were selling food (hot food to eat now and food to take away in boxes and jars); gluhvine (traditional, warmed red wine with spices); knitted scarves, hats, gloves: lots of jewellery stalls; wooden animals, scarves, all sorts of things. Linda and I bought some pendants made with little coloured stones with clay added to make cats, turtles etc, and the stallholder painted names on them for us.

We reached the Hotel Volubilus (at Parc Europ 340, Ave De La Marne, 59700, Marcq-En-Barceul,) at about 6pm. Rhonda had warned us that the hotel was ‘rather basic’. It was fine. We had a reasonable sized bedroom, good comfortable beds, wardrobe space. The en-suite was a good, roomy, clean bathroom with proper bath. The television didn’t get any English-speaking channels and there were no tea-making facilities. But we didn’t need the TV and I had packed a travel kettle so we were fine. Rhonda told us that she thought the rooms were fine but she had had complaints in the past from people who obviously expected more. She told us of one previous traveller – a tall, fat man (about 30 stone, she thought) who complained that the hotels only left tiny bars of soap. Eventually she told him there was a supermarket next-door where he could buy a whole bar for 26p.

We had dinner at the hotel, and booked for the moment they opened at 7.30pm – both too tired to wait much longer. Using my rather limited French and the friendly waitresses less limited English we managed to order starters of cheese flan for me and salmon and salad from the buffet for Linda. Both excellent, the cheese flan was big enough for a main course. We followed this with steak in pepper sauce for me and gammon for Linda. She didn’t want the sauce with it and couldn’t make the waitress understand. I tried ‘sans sauce’. Thank goodness for evening class French!

We shared a delicious bottle of Cotes du Bergerac finished with chocolate mousse. Actually, we didn’t finish it. We were too stuffed and too tire and regrettably had to leave some dessert and some booze! Off to bed.