Day Two began with an early escape from London, rubbish bag in hand, tucked neatly into a pile of others at the corner of the street. And straight away the question surfaced - where does all this refuse go? Not gone, just gone elsewhere. The world now produces around 400 million tonnes of plastic a year, less than 10% of it recycled. The rest - landfill, oceans, or fragments in our bloodstream. That one bag on a London pavement is a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is now full of drops. 

Not far away, a woman sweeping the pavement, an airplane tracing its own fumes across the sky. Air pollution above and below. And, awkwardly, I found myself distracted by her sheer size. Obesity, yes - and before you judge me for noticing, remember that obesity has become planetary. Globally, more people are overweight than underweight. And food production already accounts for a third of greenhouse gas emissions. Diet, land use, calories - all tangled in one web. Not simple, but inescapable. 

The roads out of London were surprisingly empty at seven in the morning. Not spotless though - plastic bottles strewn about, especially near the Blackwall Tunnel. In the UK, more than two million pieces of litter are dropped every day. Much of it plastic, and destined to break down into microplastics that slide into rivers, soils, even our own veins. 

Congestion Charge Zone, then ULEZ, then freedom. My hybrid was exempt, Madrid’s authorities had kindly written to confirm I would pay nothing there either. Nice, but exemptions do not scrub exhausts from the air. It was drizzling as I left, although fields on the edge of the city were clearly dry. Climate breakdown is not always a fireball or a flood. Often it is just green where it should be lush. 

Flags draped across motorway bridges - Union Jacks, St George’s Crosses - patriotism in polyester. Probably made in China, their emissions sewn into every stitch. I distracted myself with an audiobook on artificial intelligence, The Coming Wave. Within thirty minutes, I was terrified. As if climate was not enough, now the machines want a word. 

Soon enough, I was in the queue for the Channel Tunnel, engines idling, security men searching a genial Scotsman from Norwich and his son from Tunbridge Wells. Their only crime: owning a classic car. We laughed about it together once the ordeal passed.

Boarding the train was a symphony of clanks and clunks, alarms echoing down the carriages, tannoy warnings that made me think eternity under the Channel might be my lot. It wasn’t. 

The train slid away, and twenty minutes later London’s 17°C had become Calais’ 21°C—thirty-one miles, four degrees difference. Weather is local, climate is global, but still - the shift makes you think. 

France was as dry as England. Parched fields, brittle hedgerows. A stone flicked up by some distant car cracked my windscreen; at a Somme service station the only repair kit was superglue. Not exactly industry standard. 

By evening I reached Rouen. A city trying hard with biodiversity, planting and greening where it can, although the dryness still bites. Too many cars, pungent air at crossroads, the same urban choke as everywhere else. And Joan of Arc, of course. Burned here at nineteen, a saint and a rebel, remembered across the city. She lived during the Little Ice Age, when crops failed and armies torched landscapes to starve each other out. Deforestation then for war, not for shopping centres. 

And I thought, perhaps we need Joan again. Not the saint, but the rebel. Someone to face down climate collapse where politicians only prevaricate. 

So ended Day Two: rubbish bags and obesity, litter and flags, alarms in tunnels, cracked windscreens, and Joan of Arc whispering from the flames. Tomorrow the road runs deeper into France. More miles, more dryness, more reminders that travel - all travel - leaves its scars.