Sunday 19th March 2017 -THAT WAS SOMETHING …

… of a disturbed night’s sleep what with the livestock in the roof. And there I was, thinking along the lines of Marshall Matt Dillon from Gunsmoke, and “Sunday is the one day of the week a man can get up at noon and sit around with his boots off without anybody hollering at him about it”. First Sunday for almost 18 months that I hadn’t set an alarm, and there I was, wide awake and up and about at 07:30 in the morning. I’m hoping that this isn’t going to be a regular occurrence.

After breakfast, morning was quite steady – at first – and then round about 10:00 I sprung into action. By 12:00, everything not needed in the back of Caliburn had been taken out, and all of the food, clothing and other items that will be accompanying me on the next stage of my journey – because there is going to be a next stage on my journey – were all arranged neatly inside. It’s amazing, all of the space, once I managed to sort it out. And I counted almost 30 of those black plastic crates that I had systematically looted and pillaged from the rubbish bin at the supermarket in Leuven.

After all of that, I needed a sit-down. And having relaxed, made some butties and set off for the football. None at Pionsat of course, but there was a double-header at Le Quartier. Mind you, their ground was deserted at 13:00 so I went for a drive down to St Gervais d’Auvergne. Nothing going on there either so I had my butties by the lake.

Back at Le Quarter at 15:00 for the second match, but there was sill no-one there so I nipped up to Pionsat to see what was happening. Apart from a new Salle de Fêtes being built on the site of the old Maison Ducros- Maymat there was nothing going on there either.

And so back here, I checked on the internet and it seems that I have the dates incorrect. No matches this weekend – it’s next weekend when it’s all happening. D’ohhhh!

And so I made up my bed in the bedroom. even if it’s colder down there in the bedroom, I’ll snuggle up under the quilt and sleep in the quiet and in the comfort tonight. I deserve that at least. And while I was in there I began to pack away some clothes too. No time like the present.

Tea was a vegetable chili and rice, and now it’s bedtime. I’m hoping for a better night than last night.

Saturday 18th March 2017 – LAST NIGHT …

… was something of a restless night for me. For a start, I wasn’t hungry and so I didn’t have anything to eat. And then I couldn’t go to sleep for ages either. By 06:00 I was wide awake and working on the laptop.

Nevertheless, I did manage to go on my travels during the night. I’d been to some kind of city where the railway lines had been moved out of the centre to the edge of the place, and the interior where the rails and the stations had formerly been was now all overgrown and being used by the locals as a kind of park. There were some arches over where the railway lines had been – brick arches of the kind that might have been built by the Romans and in very poor repair. I kept trying to take a few photos of them but people kept on getting in the way and it was just so difficult to have a clear shot.

Anyway, I had breakfast, in company with plenty of other people and a pile of dogs – it seems as if there was some kind of Canine Convention going on here just now. And then, as usual, I had things to do on the laptop.

Having survived the initial attempt to turf me out of my room, I decided not to push my luck and by 10:00 I was on my way. First stop was the LeClerc supermarket for bread and a few other bits and pieces to set me up for the next few days. I had a chat with Ingrid on the telephone too and we arranged to meet up on Monday for a chat and so on.

And then – I’ve put this off for so long but I can’t keep on doing it. I headed for home. It’s been a long time since I’ve been down these roads. For the last 18 months or so I’ve been something of a disciple of Wilfred Grenfell, who sais that “when two paths are open, always take the more venturesome”. But I have to go home sometime.

When I finally arrived, I could see that it was clear that the gales and tempests that have battered the centre of France have given here a pretty good battering too. But there’s no real damage or anything and, to be honest, it was good to be back. The good news is that the rodent-proofing that I carried out here in December seems to have worked and there’s no obvious signs of any damage. It was 16.1°C in here too so that was good – saved me having to light a fire.

But the bad news is that the storm has done something to the internet connection and that is down. It looks as if I’ll be taking Ingrid to Montlucon on Monday to swap my Livebox over for a new one. Anyway, I had a nice sit-down and relax for the afternoon, and kicked my mug of coffee all over the floor breaking off the handle of the mug, as well as washing the floor..

One of my plans for tonight was to go down to Pionsat to watch the football. But to my astonishment, not only is Pionsat running just one team this season (instead of the two last season and even three a couple of seasons ago), the team has declared a general forfeit and abandoned all of its matches. I don’t know what to make of this. It’s all rather astonishing as far as I’m concerned.

So anyway, I made myself something quick out of a tin to eat and then settled down on the sofa tonight, trying to sleep amid the sound of the animals scratching away in the roof.

As Golden Earring once famously sang, “You know it’s good to be back home” but I have been realising day by day while I’ve been away that with my declining health (because I can see it declining every day) my long-term future lies away from here.

Friday 17th March 2017 – THAT WAS ANOTHER …

… Sleep of the Dead last night. Totally painless it was too. And I was off on my travels. I had taken a job a a tram driver and after being trained, I took to the rails. On my first journey I couldn’t pull in at a tram stop as there was a lorry parked in the way so I had to go past and reverse back in (yes, on rails, this was!). But in reversing in, I switched the points and so on setting off again I was going down the wrong road. I couldn’t reverse back either because by now another tram had pulled up behind me. And so I’d somehow managed to bring the whole city’s tram network to a grinding halt.

Breakfast was quite quiet – just two of us there – and then I came back to finish off some work before hitting the road. But I had the wanderlust and so I didn’t hang around long. I was soon on my way.

Mind you, I didn’t manage to travel very far at first. As I was driving past some kind of farm-place, I noticed the rear end of an old car poking out from under a lean-to.

At first glance I thought that it might have been a Morris Oxford MO – the “Big Minor” of the late 1940s and early 1950s of which my father had two when we were kids – KKB547 and LDM819. It’s only natural therefore that I pulled up to make further enquiries.

First thing that I noticed was that it was not a Morris Oxford MO at all but a fairly-similar-looking Hotchkiss saloon of a similar period. And that was something that quite amazed me because I’d never seen one of these before.

Secondly, it wasn’t alone either. There was a second one here too. In a much-more-complete condition. And both of these vehicles had quite a considerable amount of company.

There was a sign on the premises – “Private Property – Visits Tolerated Under Supervision Of An Occupant Of The Premises” – and you’ve no idea how long it took me to actually find someone who looked as if he belonged to the site.

Just as I was giving up all hope, a young guy turned up in an old (as in 1990s) Citroen. We had a little chat and eventually he gave me the necessary authority to go for a wander around with the Nikon D5000

And this is what I found underneath the lean-to in total. An absolute treasure-trove of vehicles.

We have of course the blue Hotchkiss on the extreme left of the photo. That’s exciting enough, and I have no idea what the beige car might be on the right – and there was no-one around to ask. But as for the other two, these are Delages and I would take the big one – which I think might be an S6 – home with me in a heartbeat. It’s gorgeous.

But then of course, that’s not all by any means because the place was littered with all kinds of stuff. Stuff that the owner thinks may be of less value but which for someone like me, are absolutely magnificent machines.

This is a chassis and bulkhead of something and I’ve no idea what it might be, or have been. But it’s not the kind of thing that I would leave lying around like this.

And that’s not the worst of it either. Because there are tons more stuff just lying around littering the yard.

This looks as if it dates to the 1930s and according to what I could make out, it might be a Talbot or maybe an ancient Hotchkiss. But that’s a sheer guess on my part because I couldn’t find any indication at all as to what it might have been.

As for this vehicle, it looks as if it’s even earlier. At least it has had a tarpaulin thrown over it to save it from the weather.

Again, I don’t have very much idea of what it might be – it’s certainly something that I don’t recall ever having seen before. It’s possibly a Hotchkiss but then again, what would I know about it?

This car is much easier to identify because there’s quite a prominent bonnet badge on the radiator.

It’s a very sad-looking Talbot, from the days when Talbot knew how to make cars rather than assemble knock-down Chrysler rubbish. It still has some of its paint and with a good little bit of elbow grease and plenty of time, someone could actually make something out of this if they would only get a move on.

This is even much more like it and this ought to be dragged under cover out of the weather as soon as possible.

The radiator badge gives away the identity of this vehicle. It’s a Delage of course, probably from the early 1930s and this is another vehicle that would find ts way down to my barn in the Auvergne if I were in a position to do something about it.

These three vehicles are extremely exciting too. We have the Delage in the far distance, and the vehicle in the centre of the photograph is the Talbot.

But the vehicle closest to the camera head-first against the outbuilding is, according to the casting on the engine, a Delahaye. Unfortunately, this is quite far gone and it would take a brave restorer of vehicles to have a good go at this. But it certainly deserves it.

And this is perhaps the saddest vehicle of them all, I reckon. It’s a 1930s Delahaye which is comparatively complete, but yet seems to be too far gone for anyone to do very much with.

This is really a tragedy because while it might not have the class of the 1950s Delage that is underneath the lean-to that we saw earlier, it is just so nice and deserves so much better than this.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. The lean-tos and sheds are jam-pack full of bits and pieces and even old cars that it is absolutely impossible to access. I could have spent all day here.

Instead, I’ll poke the lens of the camera through the bits and pieces and show you what I mean. This is a Talbot and at a rough guess it’s from the late 1920s, and it’s under cover out of the weather. And for that I’m extremely grateful.

And if you have more luck or knowledge than I have in identifying these vehicles, let me know. All the information that you can let me have would be most gratefully received.

And I wasn’t alone while I was admiring these vehicles. This deer came to join me. Personally, I reckon that she must have been attracted by the presence of Strawberry Moose sitting in Caliburn outside – you never know.

Anyway I couldn’t hang around here all day, much as I would like to. I had things to do, places to go, people to see.

My journey took me along the side of the canal and the western banks of the River Loire until I headed off through the Foret de Troncais.

By now the sun was out and the sky was clear and blue – not as nice as yesterday but nevertheless …

I stopped for an hour or so at Meaulne for a butty, to read a book and to tidy out a pile of rubbish from Caliburn. You’ve no idea how much rubbish has accumulated inside him since I hit the road for my appointment with destiny … gulp … 12 months ago

Back on the road I had yet more things to do and this involved a trip around a fewplaces in Montlucon. But it looks as if one of my projects is about to tomber à l’eau, for all kinds of reasons.

Now I’m in an IBIS Budget on the outskirts of Montlucon. I’m going to gather my wits and then head home tomorrow. First time for three months and I’m not looking forward to it, to be honest.

Thursday 16th March 2017 – I THOUGHT THAT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO SEE …

… my hotel.

It might not look very much from the outside but I’ll tell you something – and that is that it’s the first time since about 1990 that I’ve made a conscious on-the-spot decision to stay over for a second night in a hotel.

The staff is extremely friendly, the breakfast is adequate, the room is clean and tidy and the bed is one of the most comfortable that I’ve ever tried. And being right out here in the countryside, I didn’t hear a thing during the night.

The one problem with going to bed early though is that one has a tendency to wake up early too, and by 06:00 I was wide awake. I had to wait for breakfast though, which I’d booked at 07:30, and so I had the pleasure of David Bowie reminding me that it was 07:00 with his “Wake up, little sleepy-head. Shake off your clothes, get out of bed!” followed at 07:15 by Billy Cotton going “Wakey waaaaaaa…. KAY!”. Ohh the joys of “Audacity” and the ability to customise my own sound clips.

After breakfast, I sat outside in the sunshine and attacked some work that had been building up. That gave me an opportunity to have a rest and relax for a few hours. And then I hit the streets.

First stop was through the town and out the other side to the Auchan supermarket to negotiate some food for lunch. I had a good look at what was going on in there too because I wanted to see what was on offer because, as you know, I have some cunning plans. Finding the entrance to the car park was quite the thing though – it wasn’t all that easy.

once I was back on the road, I didn’t get very far. Only just about into the département of Loiret, where I came to a shuddering halt.

Here on the side of the road, jealously guarded by Rover, was a Peugeot 203 sitting here dans son jus as the French say. My ideal kind of vehicle and had it been a pick-up or even a van, I would have gone straight home for my trailer to tow it away.

It’s actually at the entrance to a car body repair shop, and it does serve a purpose just sitting here outside. That’s because inside, there are several other vehicles, including another Peugeot 203, that have been restored.

The garage proprietor explained to me (we had a very lengthy chat) that he has some excellent staff working for him and when times are slack he doesn’t want to lose them. So he picks up vehicles like this and his staff work on them whenever there’s a pause in the work.

It keeps them employed, and gives them an opportunity to demonstrate their skills by bringing something like this back to life.

But before long, in the beautiful sunshine, I arrived in Briare – or to be more precise, Briare-le-Canal – which was my destination for today.

And I had good reason to be here too. Being a Pisces and at home whenever I’m close to water, there are not many places closer to the water than around here. I have one beautiful river – the Loire, of course, and no less than three canals.

And not only that, a magnificent structure designed by Gustave Eiffel. The Pont-Canal (or aqueduct) de Briare, and it’s one of the most impressive of its type in the whole world.

But first of all, it’s lunchtime and I attack my butty with gusto. And I’m not alone here either because I’m joined by a woman from Paris in an old Fiat Multiplas who seems to travel just as I used to in North America, with everything inside and even a place to sleep.

She reckons that she’s even been as far as the North Cape in Norway travelling like this.

I have to say that I was very impressed, because it’s rare to see someone travel like that these days, and a single woman even more so.

So having had my butty and a good chat, I went for a wander around. A slow wander, it has to be said, because the day was really hot. Easily the best day of the year to date.

So to let me put you in the picture, let me tell you a little about the history of where we are. Everything here is centred around the first of the canals to be built here, and that goes back to, would you believe, the early 17th Century.

We mentioned yesterday when we talked about Cosne-sur-Loire that the river here was a major transportation route, right back as far as history records. Roman roads were of course very well-known and very well-built, but technology didn’t exist for the transport of large amounts of items.

We saw, when we were in Clamecy a few years ago, how the timber from the Forests of Morvan was cut down and floated off to Paris where it was used as firewood.

In any case, the techniques of road-building were for all intents and purposes lost once the Romans had passed on, and what passed for roads in early medieval days were nothing but beaten earth and descended into an impassible morass at the first sign of heavy rain.

There was thus no possibility of sending heavy loads by road, and so rivers became the only reliable method of transport.

Anyway, we move forward to the start of the 17th Century and the decision by Sully, the First Minister of King Henry IV to improve business between the different regions of France. Da Vinci had come up with the idea of canal locks and so Sully decided that a canal should be built to link the valleys of the River Loire and the River Seine, incorporating Da Vinci’s ideas.

Construction began in 1604 and after a pause following the assassination of the King, the canal was finally opened in 1642. It was one of the very first in Europe to use locks.

As boats became bigger and bigger, and traffic became heavier, navigation on the River Loire in places became more problematic. As a result, a canal was built in places parallel to the river to avoid the most difficult stretches of the river.

This section here that we can see runs (or rather, ran, because some of it has been abandoned) from Chatillon sur Loire to a short distance beyond Briare where it joins up with the original entrance to Sully’s canal.

But commerce, evolving as it does, required a new navigation system and this led to a modernisation of Sully’s canal and a “regularisation” of the route. This led to a new trace being built, and this required an aqueduct across the River Loire and the parallel canal.

In 1889 a decision was made to build the aqueduct across the river, and Gustave Eiffel and his company was brought in on the project, with construction of the metalwork entrusted to Daydé & Pillé. Construction began in 1890 and the first boat, the Aristide, crossed over on 16th September 1896.

662 metres long, the aqueduct is, and it’s absolutely beautiful. It became registered as a national historic monument in 1979 and what surprises me is that it took so long for its importance to be recognised.

And important it is too, because For many years it was the longest metal canal aqueduct in the world, maintaining its place at the top of the list until as recently as 2003 when it was overtaken by a new aqueduct in Germany.

And so I went for a beautiful walk across it and back along the other side today in the glorious weather. And I have to admit that I spent a good few minutes sitting on a bench, catching my breath watching a member of the Water Board painting the decorations on the pillars.

A coffee would have been nice too but astonishingly, there wasn’t very much in the way of cafés open. Just one in fact, but it was the kind of place where you needed a bank loan to buy a drink.

I just don’t understand people who are in business. Hordes of people wandering around and yet no-one seemed to be too interested in taking their money. Any self-respecting café owner should have looked out of his window, seen the beautiful day, seen the hordes milling about, and set out his stall accordingly.

It really is astonishing, the money-making opportunities that are being overlooked these days. No wonder there’s a recession at the moment.

Anyway, I headed back to my hotel and a lengthy chat with the landlord, putting the world to rights. And then back to my room for a doze followed by the remainder of my meal from last night. Potato salad is a very good standby and I’ll be doing this again.

Now I’m having an early night yet again. I need it.

Wednesday 15th March 2017 – THAT WASN’T A VERY NICE …

… night at all.

Not for any shortcomings of the hotel, I hasten to add. This was in fact one of the better Première Classe hotels (but still not as good as the one at Maubeuge last year of course) but nevertheless it took me an age to go off to sleep and then I tossed and turned a good while during the night.

A hot shower brought me round – sort-of-ish, and a good breakfast followed. I had a rest for a while afterwards, and then edited some music tracks so that I have some custom alarm calls and ringtones on my new telephone.

First stop was the Cora supermarket around the corner. And here was a thing.

Those of you with long memories will remember back many years ago about the Morrisons supermarket at Reading where the car park had a height barrier “to stop travellers entering the car park”, but also keeping out anyone with a high vehicle.

Here, they seem to have the same issues, but nevertheless they have managed to make a parking space for high vehicles and here’s a rather dirty Caliburn to prove it.

I’ve hit on a new plan for eating out in hotels, which I’ll explain later. It involves a visit to the shops and the purchase of certain items. But while the supermarket was good and objects at a reasonable price, the woman on the check-outs was useless. Far too busy talking to her friends in the queue to concentrate on what she was doing and as a result she was making mistake after mistake. Not a very good advertisement at all for the store.

Having given Caliburn a really good wash, I had a slow drive through the countryside towards the south-west and into the watershed of the River Loire.

Destination was the town of Toucy, still in the département of the Yonne. I’d driven through here on several occasions 9 or 10 years ago and I’d noticed the old railway artefacts here in the town. Today was the day that I had decided to come to see what was going on

The place was all locked up, and looked as if it had been that way for 10 years. Everything was rusting and decayed, including these beautiful diesel multiple-unit panorama cars.

The driver’s cabin is very interesting, isn’t it? But that kind of thing would never work in the UK with the restricted loading gauge on British railways.

The only British railway network with anything resembling a Continental loading gauge, the Great Central, was closed down in the 1960s.

This was probably the most short-sighted of all of the short-sighted railway “economy” measures of the Beeching era, and replacing it today for the HS2 network is costing the UK billions and billions of Pounds.

That’s the trouble with the UK of course – it’s all down to short-term economies and there isn’t an ounce of long-term vision in anything that the country does.

And they are going to find out that for themselves once Brexit begins to bite.

But leaving aside yet another good rant for a while, I carried on with my wandering around the railway … errr … museum.

As you can see, the exhibits, such as they are, have clearly seen better days and there doesn’t look as if there is anything going on here. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the way of restoration or renovation taking place on the … errr … exhibits here. They are just parked up and abandoned.

This is probably one of the saddest exhibits here on the site.

I don’t know anything very much about French railway locomotives and the like, but this looks as if it’s something quite unusual and interesting – far too interesting to be just stuck here in a siding and left to rot away.

It’s all quite depressing, wandering around here and seeing all of this.

These little locomotives were quite interesting. Yard shunters, I reckon, and made by Baudet Donon and Roussel in the early 1950s.

It’s a little-known fact that this company is actually the successor of the company founded by Gustave Eiffel, he of the tower fame. The company branched out into the construction of railway locomotives and multiple-units, and quite a lot of the company’s equipment found its way onto the French railway network during the period of modernisation after World War II.

These little machines weigh a mere 14 tonnes, are just under 6 metres in length and flat-out, they will travel at all of 16kph.

Mind you, with a Renault 60 horse-power PETROL engine, 8-speed gearbox and chain drive, you aren’t going to get much more out of her.

They were the first locomotives to come of the new SNCF standardisation process after the War and replaced all kinds of assorted yard shunters, including horses and, in at least one case, oxen.

They were essentially a temporary measure and withdrawal of the class started in 1979.

Railway tourism seems to be the up-and-coming thing these days, and this can be accomplished in many different ways.

You might also remember when we were in New Brunswick, Canada, back in October last year, that we saw that old railway bicycle that I admired so much. Combine the two together, and you’ll end up with something like this.

Mind you, it would be really exciting meeting another similar vehicle coming the other way on a single-track line. “Survival of the fittest” is what springs immediately to mind.

There’s a pile of narrow-gauge railway equipment here too, and they have laid some kind of track to accommodate it.

It looks very much like mining or quarrying equipment to me, although there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of mining around here and I’ve no idea where there might be a quarry.

But like everything else around here, it’s all lying around abandoned and there’s no signage or anything to indicate what all of it might be

One thing is quite clear though.

In the past, I’ve been totally scathing of what passes for “preservation” of railway and other historical artefacts in North America. Having seen what is (or isn’t) going on here, I’m going to have to keep my mouth closed, or else start eating some rather large helpings of humble pie.

I couldn’t leave the site though without taking a photo of this sorry machine.

It’s a Van Hool Alizée of the mid-1980s, lying here abandoned in the yard, and it brings back many happy memories for me. 25-30 years ago, I was earning my living travelling around Europe in one of these with piles of tourists when I worked for Shearings Holidays.

Beautiful machines, especially when built on a Volvo chassis, but this one is rear-engined so at first I thought that it might be a Scania. However,it turns out to be a MAN and I never had the opportunity to drive one of these.

Ohhh happy days!

As you may (or may not) know, I have a degree in Historical Technology and just down the road from Toucy is Guedelon.

Guedelon is an extremely interesting place and very high on my list of places to visit because what they are actually doing is building a Medieval castle from scratch.

Not only that, they are using nothing but construction techniques of the period, including man-powered cranes and the like.

You can imagine therefore that this was a place that was also very high on my list of places to visit, and so I set off chaud-pied, as they might say around here, to see what I could see.

But regular readers of this rubbish will know exactly what I discovered when I arrived here.

That’s right. The place is closed “for the season” and despite all of the people wandering around the site pretending to work, it wasn’t possible for me to gain admittance, even just for the purpose of taking a few photos.

That was something that I found extremely miserable.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom because as I arrived at Cosne-Cours sur Loire, I encountered this magnificent beast, and it’s another sad and sorry machine having been abandoned to the elements, despite its rarity value.

It’s a Delahaye fourgonette – I reckon a type B163 – and it’s the type of chassis preferred by the French fire brigades in the early 1950s for the building of specialist vehicles.

But it’s rather a shame to see it sitting here out in the open in a field like this. As I said – I’ll have to stop criticising the North Americans.

By now, it’s time for (a very late) lunch and so I head into the town. The River Loire passes by here in all its magnificence and there’s a nice park across the river from the town that’s a very suitable place to stop.

And, as you have probably noticed, the clouds have gone, the sun is out and there’s a beautiful blue sky to sit and watch me as I eat. It’s a marvellous afternoon and I intend to make the most of it.

The town itself is another one of these beautiful, cramped Medieval cities that has unfortunately seen better days.

There seems to have been a settlement here in Prehistoric times and there was certainly a … errr .. Gallo-Roman settlement called Condate here.

With its comparatively easy crossing of the Loire here, it was the centre of several confrontations throughout history. As far as the British are concerned, its claim to fame was that during the Hundred Years War, Henry V was marching here to meet the Burgundian Army in 1422 when he caught dysentery and died.

His premature death effectively marked the end of any serious hopes that the English might have had of making a permanent conquest of France.

By the 17th Century there was a thriving metallurgical industry here and this was the basis of the wealth of the town. It manufactured fittings for the French naval industry and these were shipped out down the Loire to the naval shipyards downriver.

However the French railway network caused a decline in navigation on the Loire and the metallurgical industry closed down in the 1870s. Some vestiges of the industry lingered on for a while but it all eventually petered out and led to the slow decline of the town.

Today though, it’s the second-largest town in the département of the Nievre after Nevers and as a result it’s become something of an important regional administrative centre.

There’s a beautiful suspension bridge here across the river and this is what had attracted me to the town. I’d never had the time to stop here before.

Unfortunately it’s not the original bridge here. That dated from 1833 but unfortunately that was destroyed during the Second World War. The bridge that’s here today dates from the 1950s but nevertheless, it’s still a magnificent structure and the setting here is tremendous.

Having had a nice walk and a good relax to read my book, I headed off to my hotel. It’s a little place right out of the way in the countryside about 2 miles from the river.

But I’m not alone here- not at all. There’s a 1944 Dodge Lorry – a veteran of the US Army parked here in the barn by the side of my room. It’s certainly the right hotel for me, isn’t it?

And my room is nice and cosy too. This was a good choice.

Tea tonight was something so simple that I’m really surprised that I have never ever considered it before. It’s so easy too, especially in a hotel bedroom and I shall be doing this kind of thing more often.

Half a tin of potatoes, half a tin of mixed vegetables, half a tin of mushrooms and some lettuce all mixed up in salad dressing. Followed by a soya dessert and a chocolate soya drink, with one of these packets of fruit-and-nut mix.

Simple, effective and healthy. You can’t say fairer than that.

And I’ve had a shower, washed my undies and now I’m settling down for the night. See you in the morning.

Tuesday 14th March 2017 – YOU MIGHT …

… or, more likely, might not … be wondering where I’ve been for the last few days. Well, almost a week in fact.

The truth is that I have had a very (un)pleasant stay amid the local facilities of the town of Verdun.

No, not the Nick, Rhys, the local hospital.

I was rushed in there on Wednesday night/Thursday morning after the landlady of the Hotel du Tigre found me flaked out in my bed having had the most serious relapse to date. She promptly called for an ambulance.

There was no internet in the hospital and somehow my telephone had become damaged so I was out of touch.

Anyway, they threw me out this morning and a taxi took me back to the hotel.

I’m still not 100% fit – far from it, in fact – so I had a slow, steady drive southwards and ended up at Bar-le-Duc where I bought a baguette and made myself a butty.

On my way through the town I’d seen an “Orange” boutique and so when it opened after lunch I trotted off round there to see what they could do about my phone. I’d managed to clean it up and dry it out but the keyboard wasn’t working, so I hoped that they could do something about it.

Nothing that they could do on the spot so repair would involve sending it away, and the hourly charge was something rather ludicrous. However, my contract has only one month to go before renewal and on renewal I would be entitled to a new telephone at a discount price. One or two deft keystrokes and I suddenly found myself the owner of a brand-new Samsung Smartphone, for all of €44:00. About half the price of the postage and minimum repair charge.

Later on, I was back on the road and had a gentle drive across the northern Burgundy mountains as far as Auxerre. This is where the new telephone came in handy because a quick search on the internet told me where the Première Class Hotel was situated – it’s quite a way out of the city.

Hopefully I’ll have a good sleep and a decent breakfast and make myself ready for the next stage of my journey.

Tuesday 7th March 2017 – WELL, I SAW A SIGN …

… and it said “Verdun”.

That’s another one of the places on my bucket list to visit before I go off to visit the hereafter, and there’s no time like the present so here I am.

But before we start, let me show you a photo of my room at the Papillon d’Or from last night and this morning. It’s a lovely room and a lovely place, and the breakfast was really nice too.

But the landlady clearly has a finely-developed sense of humour. There are two mattresses on the bed of course, and one (the one upon which I was sleeping) was thicker than the other.

And so in the middle of the night I rolled onto the other one, but it wasn’t where I expected and so I awoke in a panic, thinking that I was falling out of bed.

So by 06:00 I was wide awake and went for a shower as early as possible.

I had a slow recovery and by 09:30 I was on the road. And by 10:00 I was waiting in the queue at the IKEA on the border between Belgium and Luxembourg. It’s sale day today, there’s free coffee, and a €15:00 gift voucher for anyone spending more than €100 in the store. I need all kinds of new stuff for my new kitchen, wherever that might be, and so with some judicious purchases, I came out with €101:35 of new utensils, saucepans and the like.

But the most surprising thing of all this that I bought cost me €39:00 and I’ll post a photo of it in due course. Let’s just say that it will revolutionise my hotel-camping.

But the prize for one of the silliest signs ever must surely go to this one here.

It says, with absolutely no trace of irony “no spring-cleaning without a cup of tea”. However, as we all know, putting me with something light-coloured like this is a recipe for disaster.

The sign really ought to read “no cup of tea without spring-cleaning”. That’s much more like it where I am concerned.

I had a glance out of the fire escape window while I was wandering around. Over there is the border between Luxembourg and Belgium and there seems to be some kind of “incident” going on out there.

It looks like a fire to me, with all of that smoke.

And you’ll notice the weather. It’s foul out there with the rain pouring down like nobody’s business.

I had lunch and then I hit the road. Straight into a traffic queue that lasted for 7 kms. I despaired of this and took a detour out of the traffic, and that was when I picked up a sign for “Verdun”.

It’s a nice cheap hotel, the Hotel du Tigre (named after Georges Clemenceau, the French politician) and I’ve just had one of the best pizzas that I have ever eaten. And tomorrow I shall be off to visit the battlefields of Verdun. I’ve never been here before.

And Caliburn and Strawberry Moose have been able to cross off “Luxembourg” of their list of countries to visit.

Another milestone achieved for them.

Monday 6th March 2017 – I PAID …

… for all of this effort over the last few days.

Despite the bad night and waking up at 06:00, I was down for breakfast at 07:00 feeling fairly okay. But coming back I was overwhelmed, as if the exercise was too much, and I had to go and lie down, aching all over and feeling really bad.

Nevertheless I made it down to pick up Hannah but I clearly wasn’t on form. We took the main-line train to the European Parliament where she went off for her guided tour. Being young, Canadian and still a student, she needs to make her CV as impressive and completely different from anyone else’s if she wants to have a good job, and so I pulled a few strings the other week and managed to organise a guided tour around the Parliament.

I wasn’t up to it and so I rode herd on the luggage and read a book.

When she returned, she noticed my distress and decided that we may as well go to the airport then rather than a couple of hours later. And so we walked up to Schuman, I picked up my bank cards, and then leapt on board the Express bus (with a certain amount of confusion about the pricing structure).

Once Hannah had disappeared into the bowels of the airport I headed back for the bus to Leuven. There are two per hour, at … errr … 33 minutes past and … errr … 35 minutes past. How about that for planning? And none of them goes via the hospital.

I ended up at the station and I nipped off to find the Ibis Budget, seeing as how I really was feeling bad. But for some reason or other it was … errr … €74 tonight. Why is that?

Instead, I took a bus up to the hospital, liberated my discharge papers, sorted out my medicines, and then headed for Caliburn. And we hit the road.

I’ve ended up in a B&B near Arlon on the Luxembourg border. It’s cheap but good. There’s no food in the vicinity so I had to drive about 100 miles to find a fritkot.

Now I’m off to bed. I deserve it. I hope that I feel better tomorrow.

Sunday 5th March 2017 – THAT WAS A …

… cold and wet day today.

But it was a bad night for me, because although I’d settled down to relax in some kind of comfort, the wind must have changed during the night. There’s an air vent in the bathroom with a cap that’s presumably above roof level, and the wind must have turned to go underneath it because the rattling came right down into the bathroom at about 03:15.

That kept me awake for hours, it seemed like, and I don’t remember going back to sleep after that.

Nevertheless when the alarm went off I eventually managed to crawl out of the bed and into the shower. And then I was downstairs to breakfast at 08:00. Following that, I wandered over to the station to buy a couple of rail tickets.

At 09:30 Hannah came round and we went off to explore the market – there’s a huge market here outside the Gare du Midi on a Sunday morning. But at 11:00 we were on the railway station platform for the train coming from Leuven to Oostende. Alison was already on board, and we joined her for our journey to Bruges.

It had been beautiful in Brussels but by the time that we reached Bruges it was teeming down. Nevertheless we hit the streets and swam up to the city centre.

We had a beautiful day around the town despite the weather. Alison and Hannah even climbed up to the top of the belfry, all 366 steps of it, and I would have liked to have gone up too, but I have to be realistic.

The day ended with us in a restaurant in a side-street. It catered for people with different allergies and our meals were delicious. Hannah and I had coconut curry and Alison had a polenta lasagna.

We arrived at the railway station at the same time as a train to Leuven so we hopped on board. And now I’m back in the hotel. Totally exhausted.

Hannah leaves tomorrow afternoon and then I’m going to sleep for a week.

4th March 2017 – HANNAH’S FITBIT …

… tells me that we walked over 11 miles today. And I’m supposed to be ill too! You would never think so.

Last night was a bad night as far as I was concerned. It took me a while to drop off to sleep and I kept on waking up during the night, like at 03:00 and 06:00. At 07:00 the alarm went off and so I crawled into the shower for a really good soak (I didn’t have the energy to do that yesterday evening) and to wash my clothes from yesterday.

Breakfast started at 08:00 and although I was 5 minutes early, I wasn’t the first person down there. It was a good breakfast too and for a change I managed to eat something realistic.

Hannah was having a lie-in so it was getting on for 10:00 when she came a-knocking on my door, and then we headed off to the metro station at Brussels Midi.

And here we had our first set-back in that there is a cosplay convention in the town and the Metro was swamped with cosplayers. They were holding up all of the Metro trains so that they could set these people on their way.

Our second setback was once we were on our way, the Metro broke down and we had to alight. What we thus did was to cross the tracks to the other platform and go the long way around the circle to the Simonis station.

At the Simonis we took the old Bus 13 – the one that I used to take back home again. We alighted at the woods and went for a tramp therein (he got away unfortunately) but we didn’t have sight of a parrot as we did when Terry and Liz were here in 2011. Our walk took us past my old apartment at Expo and then round the corner to catch the bus 84.

At Heysel we had our third setback – in that the little shopping precinct there where there were all of the cafés, it was closed for refurbishment.

This led us nicely on to our fourth setback – Mini-Europe, which was what Hannah had really been hoping to see, was closed for refurbishment too.

But never mind – there was always the Atmomium. But with all of the people having come out today for the cafés and for Mini-Europe, there was nothing else to do except visit the Atomium. And so the queue was all the way down the street. That was our fifth setback.

And so we went down to the café at the bottom of the hill, and true to form, our sixth setback was that it was closed. We eventually found a café so that we could have a coffee.

A tram took us to the Tour Japonais and the Chinese Pagoda, and that was closed too. Setback number seven.

But never mind, we waled down into town past the Royal Greenhouses, the Royal Palace and the monument to King Leopold, past the Chapel of St Anne and the Riding Stables. We stopped at the Royal church at Laeken, to find that closed too. But it was 13:50 and it opened at 14:00 so we waited.

The caretaker turned up on time and we could see the interior of the church. It’s the first time that I’ve ever been in there too. It’s quite impressive too and I’ll be back at some point to take some photographs.

Down the hill to the tram stop and we took the 93 in the direction of the city centre. But then we had a tram breakdown (the eighth setback) and had to jump on board a bus. We jumped off the bus so that we could walk past the huge abandoned church of Schaerbeek, and then down the road to the old Botanical Garden where we stopped for a drink in the café there

There was an exhibition of photos taken by some Austrian of ruins that he had discovered of the German extermination programme of the mentally-ill children during the Holocaust. as I have said before, it’s quite simply not right that just one group of people has claimed the Holocaust as its own. All kinds of minorities were targeted by the Germans and focusing on just one group devalues the lives of all of the others.

The Metro and a bus took us out past the little apartment that I had at the Place Meiser and to the Tir National where we have been before, to see the graves of the Belgian Resistance who were executed by the Germans.

By now we were hungry so a Tram 25 took us all of the way round to Ixelles and the posh fritkot where I used to go when I lived at Marianne’s. And wasn’t it all delicious there, just as usual?

A bus 71 and then a tram 81 took us to Merode, and a walk through the Cinquantenaire took us to the Rond-Point Schuman where I showed her the European Institution buildings. But I was so disappointed that they were all in darkness. I hope that it isn’t symbolic.

We’re back here now and I’m stretched out trying to relax as I can feel my muscles tensing up. And I need to be fit for tomorrow as I have yet more walking to do.

Friday 3rd March 2017 – PHEW!

I’m totally exhausted!

That was a horrible night, that was. It took me ages to go off to sleep and I forget how many times that I awoke. I had a rather disturbing voyage during the night, and you don’t want to hear about it as you are probably eating your tea by now.

A shower brought me round and then down to breakfast. I was second down but at least my window seat was free. Not that it did me much good because there was no-one walking by. I wasn’t all that hungry either.

Back up in my room I had a chat with Alison and Hannah on the internet, packed my new suitcase (which is actually bigger than the old one) and hit the streets. The old suitcase was consigned to the vuilnisbakje at the hotel, which is a shame because it would still be useful for storing stuff, but it can’t be helped. I don’t want to drag that about with me everywhere.

At the railway station I had a stroke of luck as well. I’d bought my ticket for the 10:08 train to the airport, changing at Gent St Pieters, but as I rounded the corner into the train shed, they were just announcing the departure of the 09:40 direct to Brussels. That made much more sense to me as it gave me many more airport options – and so I leapt aboard.

That was an easy route into Brussels, to be sure, without changing trains – or even seats – and I was in good time too. I could dash across to the hotel – the Hotel Midi-Zuid – where I’ll be for the next few days.

My room wasn’t ready, which was no surprise at all at 11:00, but they had a consigne where I could leave my luggage. And that was what I was really after. Having done that, I headed back to the Gare du Midi and hopped on the next train to the Airport at Zaventem.

I had to wait for a while but soon enough my niece’s daughter Hannah appeared. She’s from Canada of course but she’s on a student exchange right now in Madrid. There was a cheap flight opportunity to Brussels this weekend, and this is the reason why I’ve been hanging around.

We were on the train back to Brussels and back to the Hotel Midi-Zuid. Hannah’s room was ready but mine wasn’t, but never mind. Hannah was soon down, and we went off for a walk.

Our route was the old coach driving route that I used to do around the city centre, but with a couple of short pedestrian refinements. Stops for a couple of coffees here and there, a visit to the odd museum or two, and then a meal, and we were back here by 21:00, totally exhausted and I’ll pay for this effort, that’s for sure.

So I’m going to have an early night to give my legs a chance to ease off. I’ll have a shower later to help me to relax and then I’ll feel so much better. But right now, I’m putting my feet up.

Thursday 2nd March 2017 – AS YOU MIGHT EXPECT …

… having had a decent, long walk or two during the day yesterday was that I was in no fit state this morning.

It took me a while to go off to sleep, and I was flat out until the alarm went off.

I’d been on my travels too during the night. Firstly, I was the adviser to a Politician who bore a most remarkable resemblance to a certain new Transatlantic Politician. I was dismayed with his plans and decided to resign my position, but I felt that many of the plans had been designed with that aim in view. Nevertheless, I wasn’t going to hang around.
A little later, I was back on the buses – working for a coach company that was based in a town that bore more than just a passing resemblance to Middlewich. Two of our coaches, carrying football supporters who had been to watch Northwich Victoria, and they pulled into our yard. By the time that I had caught up with them, they had been parked in a really difficult position in an alcove and I was amazed at how the drivers had managed to park them there. Only one coach was able to go on to drop off everyone so some folk had to be left behind, and this led to all kinds of confusion and anguish in the depot amongst the passengers.

Two families were ahead of me at breakfast, and one of them was sitting in my place right in the window. I had to sit somewhere else.

Back up here, I had the opportunity to go to meet Sean in Gent but I wasn’t up to it and was obliged to decline. instead, I had a good relax on my bed for a while.

After all, the weather wasn’t fit for anyone to be outside. The wind was whipping up quite a storm and there was no-one on the promenade.

You can see exactly what I mean by looking at how the waves are pounding away on this ship as it was trying to negotiate its way into the harbour. And there weren’t any other ships around in the vicinity as there usually are.

It really was rough out there.

But I couldn’t stay in my stinking little pit all day – I had things to do. And it was on my travels that I saw the aforementioned ship, the Bellini coming into port.

She’s another Luxembourg-registered ship, and stands much more chance of sailing up the Moselle River because she displaces just over 2000 tonnes. She’s a chemical tanker and was built in 2000.

But I can’t understand how it is that just recently Luxembourg has now acquired a merchant marine.

It is rather reminiscent of the story about when Austria joined NATO and was introducing its officials to the other members. One of the officials was described as “our Minister of Marine”.
“Don’t be silly” said Solana, the NATO President. “Austria is a landlocked country. How come it has a Minister of Marine?”
“Well,” replied the Austrian President. “Bulgaria has a Minister of Culture, Belgium has a Minister of Justice, so we are going to have a Minster of Marine”

I had a look around the other hotels here to see what the prices might be like, but there was nothing that might give me much of a better deal, and I ended up at the Delhaize to buy lunch. Grapes were on special offer, two punnets for the price of one and that was cheap too, so I stocked up.

On the way back I went for a prowl around the shops to look for a new bag to replace the suitcase on which the handle broke on the way here.

I ended up in a shop called Kruidvat, and this all caught my eye. Weigh-your-own sweets, but with allergy labels. When did you ever see that? I had to buy 100 grams as a gesture of solidarity.

They also had a suitable tote bag thing with wheels. The cheapest that I had seen, and it looked it too, all at €12:99. But needs must when the devil drives so I liberated an example. If it does me until I return home (where I have a choice of several) it will be fine.

Back here, I was dismayed to discover that they hadn’t cleaned my room. but not to worry – I made myself some butties seeing as it was lunchtime. Baguette, tomato and vegan cheese followed by a bunch of grapes.And then I … errr … closed my eyes for a couple of minutes.

At 15:30 a banging on my door awoke me. The cleaners wanted to do the room. I went out for a coffee – to that good place where I was yesterday, and watched the people on the promenade (because the wind had eased) being blown all around.

After that, I had a good walk and was back here for 17:00 in my nice clean room.

This is my restaurant from last night, the La Margarita where I had my good Italian penne last night.

But I’d noticed the one next to it. This certainly wasn’t here last November, so today I went to check it out. And sure enough, it’s a Syrian restaurant called the Damas and advertises falafel.

As a result of this exploration, I decided that this would be my port of call for tonight.

And wasn’t that a good decision? Here’s my falafelschotel and this little lot cost me all of a mere €8:50 and if there is better value for this anywhere in Oostende, I’d love to be able to find it.

The people who run it are Syrian refugees from Aleppo, and it nails the lie that these people are coming to Western Europe to sponge off the State.

Hard-working people who can cook meals like this should be welcomed anywhere and everywhere.

So there’s no-one on line to chat to tonight, so I’m off to bed for an early night. My hectic weekend starts tomorrow at about 12:30 so I want to be on form.

Wednesday 1st March 2017 – THE TROUBLE …

… with having had a really decent sleep during the day is that during the night it’s very difficult to drop off again. And so it was last night. Took me absolute ages.

But having said that, once I’d gone I’d gone, and until about 06:00 too. I had a quick look at the time, and turned over back sleep again until the alarm went off.

Breakfast here is at 07:30 but I still managed to haul myself out of bed early (no cacophony to accompany me, for which I am grateful) and stuck myself under the shower to liven myself up.

First down to breakfast (although I was almost immediately joined by others) and fruit salad, bread roll, orange juice and coffee. One thing about the breakfasts here, leaving aside the choice and the amounts on offer, is that everything is so fresh and tastes delicious.

And so it ought to be, given the price that one has to pay to stay in here. Of course, I’m not paying anything like the price indicated on the door, being stuck in my tiny little room in the garrett, but I’m not complaining for a moment.

What I was complaining about though was the internet. Sometime during the night it had crashed and they hadn’t been able to fix it. That left me hanging out on a limb for a while as I have so much to do here.

By 09:00 nothing had happened and so I decided to go for a walk along the promenade. It was grey and miserable, quite windy too, and there weren’t many people about.

We mentioned yesterday the story about the redevelopment of the promenade. Here, we have yet another old building from the Belle Epoch that has bitten the dust. It wasn’t as spectacular as the Villa Maritza, but there you go.

In fact by now, most of my old haunts from my spells in Oostende in the 1970s and early 80s have disappeared. All of the cheap hotels that used to be here have been swept away and replaced by blocks of holiday flats. One cheap hotel that I’d noted when I was here in 2013 had gone by the time that I came back here last November.

Not that it’s particularly relevant to this particular part of the discussion , but here’s a view of the corner of the promenade that I took this morning.

You can see another Belle Epoch villa here today, hemmed in by the more modern blocks of flats, and I wonder how long it will be before it’s gone too.

But there’s an exhibition of photos along the promenade showing us how Oostende looked 70 years ago just after the end of World War II and I noticed this photograph on display. It was taken from almost exactly the same spot as my photograph, and you can see how the corner looked back then, and compare the difference.

You might have noticed in the previous photograph the orange object on the promenade. There are actually about a dozen of them and they clearly have some kind of significance, although whatever it might be has so far escaped me completely.

It’s not exactly what I would call “artistic” but then what do I know? My idea of a sculpture is the column and statues to the right, a war memorial to the natives of the area who lost their lives at sea. It’s a shame that its site has to be cluttered up with these modern … errr … items.

I told you yesterday about the fish market here in Oostende. That’s it there, the white building with the blue wavy roof. I went for a look inside but there were only two stalls open and the choice of fish available wasn’t overwhelming. Not really worth photographing.

I reckon that the dock behind it was the old fish dock, but it’s used these days by the Police and the Customs authorities – people like that. It’s where their boats are anchored, or moored, or tied up.

When I was here in 2014 I stumbled across a ferry that I hadn’t noticed before, in all the years that I’ve been coming to the town. The deep-water port goes deep into the town and there isn’t a pedestrian way across the entrance. It’s a long walk around to the other side.

That’s the reason for the ferry, anyway.It’s only a small ferry, with room for 50 seats on board, and I took a photograph of it from the far side of the port entrance, with the town in the background. And also with the old ramps from the days when there was a ferry service across to the UK.

It’s always a bad idea for me to see a ferry, because I end up in a bad mood. In fact whenever I see a ferry it makes me cross. Especially when it’s a free ferry, and today is no exception. It always brings out the sailor in me.

Of course, that’s the reason why I was able to take a photograph from the other side of the port entrance – I’d piled on aboard the boat. As indeed you might expect.

You’ll notice by the way the booths on top of the quay to the right. It was some kind of market day going on up there.

It’s been months and months since we’ve had a real “Ship of the Day”, but you can’t go sailing across a port (even if it’s nothing like as busy as it was 50 years ago) without encountering a ship or two.

We’re in luck today, because here we have the Simon Stevin, registered in … errr … Luxembourg. Just imagine sailing this ship up the Moselle. She displaces 35,000 tonnes and was built in 2010.

She is actually a pipelaying vessel, and that will explain her presence here. With the expansion of the wind farm out on Thornton Bank, they will be needing extra cables laid to the shore.

The Simon Stevin would be the ideal vessel to be involved in a task like this.

The Simon Stevin isn’t the only big ship in the port either. We also have the Willem de Vlamingh in here too, and she’s likewise registered in Luxembourg.

She is your actual cable-layer and was built in 2011, displacing 6800 tonnes.

So here we are – some of the benefits that the wind farm has brought to the town of Oostende

As if that wasn’t enough, the harbour pilot boat was setting out of the docks and heading out to sea.

The entrance to the port is somewhat complicated and so a harbour pilot is necessary for certain boats that want to enter here. And so it looks as if there’s one of those standing offshore needing help to come in.

I couldn’t see anything hanging around outside, and nothing had come in by the time that I had left. I’ll have to go round later on this afternoon or maybe early tomorrow morning to see if anyone else has come in to join the party.

We saw in an earlier photograph – the one that I had taken of the Promenade in the 1940s – all of the fortifications that covered the shoreline of this part of the world. All of them built by the Germans in World War II

There are still plenty of them left, dotted all over the coast and we have seen plenty of them in the past. The eastern side of the entrance canal to the deepwater port is still littered with them even today and in all of the time that I’d been coming to Oostende I’d never actually been for a wander around them – until today, that it.

The port of Oostende had been a German submarine base in World War I and had been the subject of what was the precursor of the later commando raids of World War II. Not only that, the beaches here would make an ideal landing for the Allied armies coming to liberate Europe in 1944, what with the major port of Antwerp only just down the road.

Hence the German were quite nervous about the coastline around here and had used labour from the prison camps to construct these massive fortifications, as well as many others of all different types which have long-since disappeared.

What many people don’t realise though, because it was another one of these wartime secrets that wasn’t put into the Public Domain until the great release of wartime records in 1994, was that the Allies knew absolutely everything that there was to know about the Atlantic Wall, and they didn’t even need to send someone to look at it.

The company that had contracted to build it was a Belgian company, from the rue des Atrebates in Brussels. But what the Germans didn’t realise what that the company was actually owned by a Russian emigré called Leopold Trepper. And he had a part-time employment as a spy for the Soviet Union, leading a group called the Rote Kapelle or Red Orchestra

It was one of the greatest triumphs of espionage in World War II but because it was a Soviet triumph, it never received the acclaim that it deserved.

But the work was done thoroughly, and the vestiges are very difficult to remove. We’ve seen when we were in France a few years ago that one of the gun emplacements near the Atlantic Wall suffered a direct hit from a blockbuster bomb, and all that it did was to tilt the concrete.

That’s why many of these places are still here. Explosives are really the only way to remove them and it’s far too dangerous to destroy them in a congested area.

The Atlantic Wall isn’t the only set of fortifications here at Oostende. We have another exciting pile of stuff buried in the sand dunes.

Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to go over to it. It was all fenced off and I couldn’t find an obvious point of entry, and so I can’t tell you exactly what it is.

I shall have to make further inquiries.

We saw the new harbour wall when we were here in November. We walked the whole length of the other side of it in order to have a good look at what they had built, and I was tempted to go for a walk down this side of the harbour wall today, but the weather was conspiring against me.

There were some people out there trying to walk down there, but they weren’t having a great deal of success.

And you might be wandering what that bow of a ship is doing set up on a plinth out there

A closer inspection reveals that it certainly is part of the bow of a ship, and the colour gives you a clue – that it might be something to do with the Royal Navy.

It is in fact part of the bow of HMS Vindictive, a cruiser that has a very important claim to fame in the history of Oostende.

The British were concerned about the U-boats operating out of the port after its capture by the Germans during World War I, and so they launched two raids on the harbour, sinking ships in the entrance canal to the docks.

HMS Vindictive was one of those that was sunk here, in the raid on 10 May 1918, and when it was cut up for scrap, the bow section was preserved as a monument.

The English Channel is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and we have thousands of photographs going back to 1970 of ships sailing up and down here.

As ships have grown larger and larger, there are fewer and fewer of them, but the size means that you can see them easier even when they are away on the horizon, especially if you have a 305mm zoom lens.

I’ve no idea what kind of ship that this might be, but it’s certainly a big one and it seems to have an on-deck cargo. There’s plenty of accommodation on there too, so I’ve no idea what it might be. I know that there’s a car transporter that takes passengers with it and sails from Hamburg to South America, but that is probably not it.

No prizes for guessing what this ship might be. The initials of the owner – MSC- painted on the sides gives the clue away, because we have seen dozens of these in the past sailing up the St Lawrence River on the way to Quebec and Montreal.

It’s a container ship of course, and a huge one at that. And it’s empty too. And that’s a symptom of the world’s reliance on China for its manufacturing industry and that the world has nothing to send back in return.

We saw all of this with Japan in the 1970s and how it led to the collapse of manufacturing industry in the UK. Now, the rest of the world is suffering, and this is the Brave New World into which the Brexiters have plunged their country, with no colonies and noallies to back them up.

With the telephoto lens still on the camera, I could take a photograph all the way down the beach in the direction of Zeebrugge. But you can’t see much down there because of the wind whipping up the sand all the way down the beach.

We were brave, those of us out there, but at least I had done what I had intended to do, which was to have a good visit of this part of Oostende. It’s hard to think that I’ve never been out here, in all the years that I have been visiting the town.

Now I can head back to civilisation.

Parked up at a wharf near the ferry is a sailing ship, the Nele.

You might think that she is an ancient ship but she was built as recently as … errr …2005, but to a design of a traditional Oostende masted sailing ship.

It’s possible to go off for a mini-cruise on board and I did admit that I found the idea somewhat tempting. But I imagine without any doubt that I’ll be back here some time or other, and so I can make further enquiries.

I’ve not quite finished yet over here.

We’ve seen the wind farm out there on Thornton Bank. That’s about 30 kms offshore and in order to bring the power onshore they have a huge submarine cable.

Outside their offices they had a couple of metres of cable on display, and so I went over to take a photograph of it. It’s interesting because NALCOR in Labrador have laid a cable under the Strait of Belle Isle and are planning another one under the Gulf of St Lawrence to Cape Breton, so I was curious to see what a submarine cable looks like.

It will be of interest to the Brits too. Having sold their electricity-generating capacity to the French, one of these will be laid across the Channel sooner or later to run British electricity across to France in the same way that the Compagnie Lyonnais des Eaux runs British water from Kent across to Northern France through the pipeline in the Channel Tunnel in times of drought.

Back on the other side of the canal I went to the Delhaize to buy some stuff for lunch. They had grapes on offer too so that was today’s fruit issue resolved, wasn’t it? And back here, I crashed out for an hour as soon as I got in, which meant that I was rather late for my butty.

This afternoon I had a few things to do, and then went out for a walk. And here I encountered yet more of Belgium’s world-famous customer service. I went into a café for a coffee, and sat and waited for a waiter.

And waited.

Eventually, a waiter appeared, and cleared a few empty tables – and then disappeared. Eventually, he came back and I ordered a black coffee.

And waited

And waited.

Eventually I picked up my coat and left, heading for the café next door. I’d beens een by the waiter, placed my order and had it put on the table in front of me long before the other waiter in the other café had brought me the one that I had ordered.

I came back to the hotel for a warm, and then wandered off for tea. I know a nice Italian restaurant here that is cheap but good value, and they served me up a delicious penne all’arrabbiata, nice, hot and spicy.

So I’m going to try for an early night, and see how I am, and how the weather is, tomorrow. I hope that it’s a nice day and that I’m feeling up to some exciting moments.

Tuesday 28th February 2017 – COLD, GREY, WET, MISERABLE AND WINDY.

But that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about Oostende, because that’s where I am right now. And this is the train that brought me here from Leuven – a nice comfortable modern and clean express train. And we didn’t have a derailment either.

Having been liberated from the hospital for the next 6 weeks, and having things to do around Belgium this coming weekend, there’s no point in going home. I may as well go and find the seaside for a few days.

As seems to be the custom these days, one really good night is followed by one that is really bad. And last night was no exception.

By the time that I’d finished everything that I had to do, it was almost midnight, so I didn’t listen to the radio at all but simply switched off the laptop and settled down for the night. I’m not sure whether I dozed off at any time, but I do know that at 05:00 I was up and going for a stroll down the corridor – and hasn’t it been ages since I’ve had to do that?

I must have gone to sleep after that because the alarm awoke me at 07:00 as usual. I just about made it to breakfast where I was joined by my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder friend up to his usual antics, and my Dutch/Russian friend who wanted a long chat – but he must be joking.

This appetite thing is getting to me too because I decided that rather than throw most of my breakfast into the rubbish bin as I seem to have been doing these last few days, I’d just have a slice of toast. And if I’m off my food you know that something is really wrong;

After a relax, I packed up my stuff, said goodbye to the aforementioned Dutch/Russian guy and hit the streets, in the direction of the railway station.

And once there, I had a choice of two trains for me, the 10:19 changing at Gent St Pieters on the stopping train, or else the 10:34 direct to Oostende. Only 15 minutes difference so I chose the latter, which is just as well because at that moment my suitcase fell apart. Rather, the dragging handle broke off and that rather defeats the purpose of bringing it instead of the big shoulder bag that I usually take with me. I knew that there was a reason why this lives in the back of Caliburn – now I remember why, that it’s not up to all that much. I have a couple of others at home but I’m clearly going to have to buy another one before I go much farther.

This time I’d come prepared, with the big Nikon handy. On the way out of the station we took the same track as the other day close to the carriage sidings and I could take a much better photograph of the front bit of that ancient multiple unit that’s parked up here.

And it looks even worse at a higher resolution, the poor thing. It really does need a good home

That’s not all that there was that was exciting over there.

There’s some kind of ancient carriage parked up there too. With a rear platform like that it looks something like out of the wild west that we encountered in New Mexico when we were on our travels over there in 2002.

I don’t recall seeing photos of anything like this on Belgian rails, but you never know

We took the high ground out of Leuven and passed above where the railway derailment had been on the 18th of February. You can see quite a bit of debris still by the side of the line, and the new ballast where the track has been relaid.

When I passed by here the other day on my way to Lokeren I hadn’t been quick enough to photograph it – but today I was ready with the Nikon and so I could add it in.

The weather was really confusing today. When we arrived at the railway station it was cold and wet, with a gale blowing that threatened to whip off my cap.

But then the clouds blew away, the sun came out and although the wind didn’t drop, it wasn’t too unpleasant. And then the clouds came back, and brought the rain with them again.

And round and round we went.

We were not the only things that were going round and round either. There’s a wind farm just offshore here at Oostende and the weather was such that they were going round and round too – like the clappers in fact.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m a big fam of wind turbines and I’m really surprised that, with all of this wind energy freely available, that other countries don’t take advantage of it.

I can count on on hand the number of commercial wind turbines in New Brunswick and Labrador – all of this free energy going completely to waste.

How long is it since we have had a Ship of the Day? You must have noticed the big one out near the wind farm, and so I cropped a part out of the photograph and blew it up. I can do this kind of thing despite modern terrorism legislation.

I’ve no idea what kind of ship it is, but the flattish front makes me think that it might be some kind of ro-ro freighter, and the load that it’s carrying is suggestive of railway wagons.

However I don’t know of any rail-freighter operating around here since the closure of Dover Western Docks.

We can have another Ship of the Day while we are at it.

As you know from our previous visits to Oostende, fishing is the big thing here since the ending of the Oostende Ferries. We’ve visited the big fishmarket and seen the outdoor stalls. The fish is mostly fresh out of the sea, due to the fishing fleet that’s based here in the port.

Here’s one of the aforementioned on its way out to sea. It’ll be back here in the small hours and its catch will be on the market shortly afterwards

While you admire the rear of the Casino, having seen the front last time I was here, I headed off to my hotel.

It’s the same one as last time, the excellent and impressive Hotel Imperial, and I have the same coach-driver’s room that I had last time, stuck down in the corner. Last time that I was here it was a dark red – today it’s a light blue with yellow and green stripes

It was about 12:30 when I arrived and the receptionist, efficient, polite and as curt as ever, told me that check-in time was 15:00 and if I would like to leave my bags in the luggage store in the basement and come back then, she’d register me in.

And so I went off for a butty and then had a good walk along the seafront in the biting wind and watery sunshine to find a café. A nice hot mug of coffee was definitely on the cards.

Having dealt with the food and coffee issues, I went to continue my walk along the promenade. I ended up at the Villa Maritza – one of the last vestiges of the Belle Epoch along the seafront here in Oostende.

Originally known as the Villa rosenda, it dates from 1885 and was the home of the manager of the casino at the turn of the 20th Century.

In the 1980s it was abandoned and threatened with demolition, but was bought by the local council. They used the upper floor as offices while a restaurant occupied the ground floor. Now it’s undergoing a process of renovation.

I made it to the beach too, but didn’t stay out there too long what with the wind. It really was savage. But finally it was time for me to head back to the Imperial and book myself in.

What I didn’t like was the booking clerk looking at me. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”. No wonder that there was no silverware on display and there were no young and nubile serving wenches loitering in the vicinity. Anyway, I headed up to my room

First thing that I did was to unpack my stuff.
Second thing that I did was to have a beautiful hot shower and to wash my clothes – and of course I had some clean ones from the launderette on Sunday.
Third thing that I did was to lie down on the bed and to close my eyes for five minutes. My eyelids were terribly heavy.

A couple of hours I was out for, and a good couple of house it was too. It mush have been a good walk that I had had, that’s all I can say.

Both Liz and Alison were on line so I had a good chat with both of them to pass the time of day in pleasant company, and this tookme nicely up to tea time. There’s a nice little fritkot across town and that’s where I decided to aim for.

That wasn’t as easy as it might have been, seeing as by now the rain was absolutely streaming down. I had the usual joke with the night porter about
“How can you tell when it’s summer in Belgium?”
“Well, the rain is usually much warmer”.

Of course, having gone all of that way, I discovered that the place was closed tonight. That was rather odds-on wasn’t it?

Instead, I walked back to the fritkot down the road from here and had a falafel butty for tea instead. Wasn’t quite the same but this really wasn’t the weather to go about exploring.

Instead, I found my way back to my hotel room and called it an early night. I was pretty well exhausted after my long day out and the distances that I had travelled.

And it’s not looking good for the weekend when I need to be on my best behaviour, is it?

Monday 27th February 2017 – NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL …

… the Sleep of the Dead!

By about 21:30 I was totally out of it, what with all of my exertions over the weekend and my late night on Saturday. And with a hectic 10 days to come, there’s no point in pushing out the boundaries so I hit the sack. I vaguely remember at about 23:30 waking up to switch off the laptop, and that was absolutely that until the alarm went off at 07:00.

Totally painless, and I felt so much better for it.

I had company a breakfast – one of these Obsessive Compulsive Disorder people who spent 10 minutes washing a mug, and then 10 minutes washing a glass – that type of person. And then, inexplicably, he left his dirty knife in the sink – and told me not to wash it as he would do it later. Not that I was intending to of course – each to his own around here – but it was such a strange thing to do given how much time he had spent washing the rest of his stuff.

Hospital came next – and I had to get a move on because Bane of Britain had taken his hospital folder down to Caliburn last night and he needed it up there. It’s all keeping me fit anyway. And up there, the nurse who fitted my catheter into my catheter port did so with such skill and dexterity that I didn’t even realise that she had done it and taken the blood sample.

This led to the following fantastic exchange –
Our Hero – “you know, I’m so impressed. You did that so gently that I didn’t even realise it”
Nurse – “I was Belgian Ladies’ national darts champion in 1984 and 1986”

I had to wait ages to see the doctor, but in the meantime I saw Kaatje, my Social Welfare worker and Ingrid, the trick cyclist. Ingrid managed to wangle me a visit to see the Professor who is handling my case, and Kaatje conformed that absolutely everything is up-to-date as far as payments go, and she’ll find all of the required information that I need for my insurance by next week (I shall be passing by).

As far as my health goes, the news isn’t quite so good. Blood count is down, to 10.3 and I’m not very happy about that. The protein loss is stable, but it’s still way too high as we all know.

But the professor didn’t give me much encouragement. I have renal failure – well, we’ve all guessed that with the protein loss didn’t we, so no surprise there. But I have a rare disease as you all know and according to the Professor, “it’s not responding like it should”.

She thinks that moving house is a good idea, because hauling wood and water is not such a good idea, but as to whether I need to go into a care home, rent a property or buy something else, she recommends renting. Apparently I’m
well enough right now that I don’t need a care home, but if I rent somewhere rather than buying it, I can escape from that commitment much easier than a purchased accommodation. She can’t say whether I’m good for &5 years, or good for 10 years, and when you add up all of that, it doesn’t sound too healthy, does it?

On the way back, I went to buy some bread for lunch, and had a goodbye kiss from the girl in the supermarket on the corner. That cheered me up no end, I’ll say!

After lunch, I carried on packing and moving stuff down to Caliburn. But I had a brief moment of distraction ringing up my bank. There’s an “issue” with a payment on my account, for no reason whatsoever, and it’s the monthly payment that i need to make to my Storage company in Montreal – the ones with whom I’ve had all of these issues just now.

“Unusual spending patterns” is the issue so I phoned them up – with a French mobile from Belgium to the UK, explained this to the girl on the phone, who promptly put me on hold for 8 minutes. By the time that I was reconnected I was steaming. The discussion that we had was … errr … rather heated, and in the end they put the phone down on me before I had quite finished telling them exactly what I thought of them and their bank.

But at least the payment has been made and I hope that this will be the last of it. But I’ml getting rather sick of it all.

For tea I had sausage, mash and frozen veg for tea, followed by vegan ice-cream and peach halves. That’s most of my food from here finished, and whatever is left is left.

Another four loads of stuff down to Caliburn, and I even found time to go for a coffee with Sean, the guy who used to live here. I quite enjoy his company, until he starts on about the EU. He really has a bee in his bonnet about it and he isn’t ever going to change my opinion, so I don’t know why he wants to start a discussion about it – unless it’s something to do with the two or three beers I suppose.

And I had a weird experience on the way back. Some French van with three men in it, were stopping at each girl that they saw in the Kapucijnenvoer and asking them a question. It didn’t seem quite right to me, especially when they almost stopped at the same girl twice, realised that it was she and drove off rapidly. I’ve taken the vehicle the registration number of the van just in case, because I can smell a rat from here, never mind from there.

Ad so now I’m totally exhausted, so I’m just about to go off to bed. My last ever night here in this hostel (I hope) and I’m exhausted. I’ve had a really busy day and I need to relax.

Let’s hope that the weather improves.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality