France :)

Well, we've moved on a bit now. After clearing the lock from the Netherlands out into the North Sea/English Channel, we did an overnighter down to Calais in France. One thing we were very pleased for on that leg was contacting the harbour pilots at Zeebrugge and Calais, who gave us clear instructions on how to cross the busy shipping lanes, and in the case of Calais, enter the port without issue. 
We took a free mooring buoy in Calais for the first night, before moving into the marina to wait for suitable weather to progress. This gave us the opportunity to do some provisioning, empty the bins, have a shower, purchase a bit of diesel and poke about the town, and the harbour master there very proudly told us that Calais is the cheapest marina in all of France :)
From there, we did a short hop to Boulogne-sur-Mer, again taking a berth in the marina there - there is little in the way of anchoring possibilities in this area. Another overnighter brought us to the beautiful Normandy harbour town of Saint-Vaast-le-Hougue. We anchored outside of the town harbour wall at first, but it was super rolly and we soon moved through the lock gates into the harbour/marina. But what a fantastic little harbour town/village St Vaast is - apparently it had won the 'favourite village in France' award back in 2019, and you can certainly see why!
After enjoying ourselves there for the best part of a week, we got underway again on our longest leg so far. Leaving in the late afternoon, we beat our way up to the cape at Barfleur, got bounced around pretty well in the tidal race there and made our way into Cherbourg, where we dropped the hook up behind the outer harbour wall to wait out the contrary tide and try to get a bit of sleep. Early the next morning, we motored out straight into some pretty choppy seas in the vicinity of the harbour entrance, then made some sail and turned west, heading a good way out to sea in an attempt to lessen the effects of the Alderney race that we were about to cross.
We saw SOG speeds of over 9 knots crossing the Alderney race, but it was fairly smooth sailing despite the water boiling around us. After clearing Alderney and the Casquettes, the going got pretty easy, sailing whenever the wind and tide allowed and generally motorsailing when the tide was against us. We had a quiet night at sea passing Guernsey and beyond and spent a bit of time reading up on our options to approach Brest - either the short cut through the Chenal du Four or the long way around Ushant. In the end, as it would have been dark and the tide would have been against us through the Chenal du Four, we opted for the long route around Ushant and spent the entire next night looking at the lighthouse there as we rounded it.
Daylight saw us just clearing Ushant in flat calm waters, and we motored and later sailed our way into the bay at Brest, dropping the hook at Roscanvel for a swim and a good sleep :)