To Bruges and back in a bathtub

I had to go to Bruges, and the options were either to take my old Audi A2 or get some touring miles under the wheels of the Morgan Super 3 before the weather became too cold for that sort of thing. So I opted for the Morgan, and it turned out to be a splendid idea.

First, the pre-trip checks. For tyre pressures, at the rear you have to open the boot and remove the inner panel; at the front the fancy wheel design means the valves are accessed from inside and below the wheel covers, so you have to roll the car around until they appear.

Morgan’s standard tyre pressures, all around 40psi, are quite high. (Some owners drop them to 30-something, and I may try this later.) While the back wheel was up and accessible, I lubricated the chain. Fluid levels are an easy check under the bonnet, secured with fiddly Dzus fasteners.

There’s a reasonable amount of oddly shaped luggage space beneath the bootlid, plus plenty more if you load up the optional rear deck and side racks.

Loads more luggage space than a motorcycle, then, and I’m told Super 3s are popular with people who used to take biking holidays. Here you can dress down and it’s more sociable and warmer, although you can’t filter through traffic.

Because of the sparsity of these Morgans, and perhaps owing to the three wheels, it turns out that Super 3s aren’t recognised by Le Shuttle’s booking system. It would possibly be okay to enter the model as a ‘Morgan Roadster’ (technically I suppose it is but also isn’t).

But not being sure about the three-wheeled thing, I phoned them, and the booking was made by a kind operator – although at a marginally pricier large car rate, which they do for anything weird that doesn’t show up on the databases.

After describing the Morgan, I was advised to take the small car lane to the train, where the rear wheel clonked slightly alarmingly over the grates that run along the middle of each carriage.

I opted for a fairly leisurely schedule, even though Bruges is only an hour and a half from Calais; it turned out to be a good strategy, because it rained lots.

Folkestone is prettier than I knew, for an overnight stop; Dunkirk likewise for another. I usually load on the miles on a road trip, but it was nice to sit and write for a while, wait for a gap in the clouds and then get in another hour or so of driving.