Category Archives: givet

Sunday 3rd April 2016 – I DIDN’T FEEL …

… much like it this morning, that’s to be sure. I was awake at 07:20 but that is of course not the same as getting out of bed. In fact it took me a good hour to summon up the courage to leave the bed. But once I was up, I started to collect all of my affairs together and it didn’t take too long to be ready.

And I discovered why the internet had dramatically reduced in speed and strength. It seems that the repeater for the wi-fi was in my room underneath the bedside cabinet and I’d unplugged it in order to plug in my laptop. It didn’t half work better once I’d reconnected it

I picked up Caliburn and then headed for the Belgian border, stopping off o pick up a baguette on the way. And then I had a nice drive along the Meuse where I stopped at a good spec somewhere just north of Profondeville to admire the view and have a little kip. Crashed out again!

My baguette was enormous and I struggled to eat it all, and then once I’d gathered my wits (which doesn’t take long these days) I set off. And by the time I got to Phoe … errr … Namur, the sun was out and everywhere looked so nice.

I had an uneventful drive back to Alison’s, stopping for a couple of hours on the Motorway Service Area at Heverlee to crash out for a while in the glorious, warm sunshine, and then to bring up-to-date the paperwork. And to have a coffee too, which is the first coffee that I have had since Thursday, would you believe.

But with the internet at the Motorway crashing out, I lost interest after a while and headed back to Alison’s. She loved her tree, which pleased me greatly because I don’t really ever know how to thank people properly, and we ended up having a good chat.

But now I’m off to bed because I have an early start in the morning. My treatment begins at 09:30, so they say, which means that I need to be signed in at 09:00. But I want to be there much earlier than that because, firstly, the earlier we start, the earlier we finish and secondly, I’ve no idea how long this treatment is likely to take, there will be side-effects so I’m told, and I have to see the Social Services people. I need to be on top form.

So I’ll see you all tomorrow and let you know how it went.

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Saturday 2nd April 2016 – NOW, HERE’S A THING.

Even though I’d had an early night last night, I slept right through the night and didn’t remember a thing. I didn’t leave the bed once and it’s been a long time since that has happened. I did have some kind of nocturnal ramble though, but all that remains in my head is meeting Sue, a girl whom I knew from Swindon, taking her by surprise as I stuck my head around the door where she was working, and there was also some kind of road transport that consisted of a vehicle from the 1920s but with no engine – instead there was some kind of rotary pedal arrangement that required two people to operate it – something similar to a pedalo.

It took me ages to pluck up the courage to leave my comfortable bed – I’m feEling the strain now, that’s for sure. But then I went for something of a walk to find a boulangerie , without a great deal of success. There was a street market today, and an artisan-baker had a stand there, but she was selling “normal” bread by the kilo and not a baguette in sight.

I ended up at the little Carrefour supermarket in town and bought a baguette and a couple of other things from there and then wandered off to the car park to pick up from Caliburn what I need for lunch, falling almost immediately upon a boulangerie – and then another one about 100 metres away. But that wasn’t all that I fell upon. Around the corner at the back of the hotel is an Indian restaurant. They advertise a vegetarian curry with plain rice, with side dishes such as a garlic naam, and the prices looked so reasonable so that I’ll be going that way tonight to see what it all tastes like. It’s been years since I’ve had a good meal from an Indian restaurant – Montreal last August in fact.

From what I saw of Givet, it’s a pretty little place. A small French town with a maze of narrow streets. It’s clearly seen much better days, like most places in France, but its history is impressive. There’s a huge citadel that is perched on a headland and overlooks the town and in ordinary circumstances I would have gone up there. But these, unfortunately, are not ordinary times as we all know.

Back at the hotel I didn’t move very far at first, but at 13:20 they came around to clean the hotel room so I had to wander off outside for half an hour to take the air and go for a stroll along the river. And after lunch, I crashed out for a couple of hours, despite my mega-sleep last night.

I didn’t do very much at all later on, except to go out for my meal. And I need to be careful about saying that it was something of a disappointment. Stoke on Trent it isn’t, of course, and it’s something astonishing, as I will be the first to admit, to find an Indian restaurant in a town like Givet. That’s a fact worth celebrating on its own and I don’t regret having gone there for my evening meal. These kinds of places deserve all of our encouragement and support.

Back at the hotel, I climbed wearily up the stairs and into my bedroom. I switched on the laptop and discovered that the internet speed and strength had collapsed. I waited for about half an hour to load up the internet but I crashed out long before anything had loaded.

About an hour later, I woke up with the radio still playing, so I switched off the laptop and went back to sleep.

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Friday 1st April 2016 – I’M BACK …

… on the road again today. I was awake early enough but when I switched on the laptop, there was someone on line with whom I wanted to have a chat. Consequently it was about 09:30 when I went downstairs and I hit the road straight away.

My first stop was at the town of Ramillies, the site in 1706 of one of the major, if not decisive battles of the War of the Spanish Succession. And it was here that I realised that I had forgotten my mobile phone and camera. Still, start as you mean to go on, I suppose.

Instead, I went shopping at the Delhaize at Inhout so as to stock up with food for my couple of days, and here I received a lovely smile from a young girl. I suppose that I’ll have to add it to the list of places to revisit. After all, it’s not every day that I have such a nice smile like that and I need to remember these places.

I called at a nursery on the outskirts of Namur. Alison is a very keen gardener and I want to thank her for being so kind to me, so I managed to pick up a young almond tree that will look really nice when it starts to blossom. I hope that she’ll like it.

Fuel at Namur was a mere €0:97 per litre, which is the cheapest that I’ve seen it for about 15 years. Caliburn was running quite low and so I profited by fuelling him right up, as I’m sure you would have done too at that price.

I missed the turning that I wanted at Namur and ended up on the wrong side of the Meuse – the eastern bank which is quite industrialised. It took me ages to find a crossing over onto the western bank, by which time I reckon that I had missed all of the picturesque hotels. but not to be outdone, I carried on southwards to Dinant, where the streets were undergoing a total renovation. There was nowhere to park, nowhere to move around, and walking around the town didn’t look very easy at all.

As a result, I pressed on towards the frontier, stopping for my butty somewhere where there was a lovely view across the river. Having no answer at a couple of bed-and-breakfasts, and at yet another, being told that it was full and I should refer myself to the other two in the town.And so I eventually found myself across the French border, in Givet. The first hotel that I found had transformed its rooms into apartments.The prices at the next few that I found frightened me to death and so as a last resort I found myself at the Ibis Budget on the outskirts of the town. I had no luck here either as the computerised registration system was down.

From here, I decided to cut across country to Rocroi where I knew that there were a few cheap hotels, but instead, negotiating the narrow one-way streets of Givet I found another hotel, the “Reflets Jaunes”. They were busy too and all of the cheap rooms had gone, but when I moaned about the price they allowed me a 20% discount which made it much more like my kind of place. There was secure vehicle parking too round the corner which was very handy because the streets weren’t half narrow.

Once I’d installed myself, I crashed out for an hour or so and then had a shower and washed my clothes. And I do have to say that I wasn’t disappointed with my hotel. I’ve been obliged to decline breakfast because it’s so expensive, although had I been a meat-and-dairy eater, I wouldn’t have complained for a moment because it really did look excellent, the way the receptionist described it. But the room is nice, warm and comfortable, and the towels are so fluffy that I’ve no idea how I’m going to close my suitcase when I leave here. The shower is lovely too and the internet connection is superb.

Later on in the evening, I went to see what there was to eat. There are several fritkots in the town but none of them sell falafel from what I was able to see. One was however next to a Carrefour “City” so while my chips were frying, I went next door and bought a cucumber salad to have with the chips.

After tea, I started to watch an Inspector Hornleigh film but my heart wasn’t in it and I’d gone in about 15 minutes. I’m definitely noticing how much I’m struggling now so I hope that the next few days will start to see a slight improvement in my health. It’ll be three weeks since I will have had a blood transfusion.

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