… not exactly sitting in a rainbow, and not sitting in my usual hotel either. I’m in an Ibis Budget hotel at the back of the railway station in Leuven.

As I mentioned a few days ago, with not having organised my booking until too late, there were none of the cheap rooms going at my usual place. I had to look elsewhere for somewhere to stay.

This place is actually cheaper and much closer to the railway station – like 100 metres in fact. There are no facilities here in the room though, but you can’t have everything.

This morning it was a real struggle to leave my bed and I wasn’t in much of a mood to do anything. Consequently I ended up with not enough time to do a full back-up from the big desktop computer.

Nevertheless, I’d made my sandwiches and my coffee so at least something was prepared.

Round the corner I went and ended up at the viewpoint overlooking the port.

And having permed any two from three of the Ile de Chausey ferries over the last few days, we have a full house of Chausey boats over at the Ferry Terminal this morning.

Both the Joly France ferries and the third one, Belle France, are over there, as is Chausiaise, the small freighter. It’s far too early for them to be out working.

My route took me down into town and back up the hill towards the railway station. And the walk was absolutely agonising again, just like last time. I might be feeling a little better, but it doesn’t look much like it.

The train arrived in the station at exactly the same time as I did, which was nice.

And one sign of progress was that I managed to climb in correctly and respectably, not like last time when I couldn’t climb into the train and actually fell in.

It’s just a one-car unit of 8 carriages today and it was heaving with people. Not an empty seat anywhere and I had a very uncomfortable place without a table to work on.

Backing up my computer was uncomfortable but everything else was difficult and I spent most of the journey catching up on my sleep.

We arrived bang on time at Paris Montparnasse and then I had to wander off to find the metro to take me to the Gare du Nord. The walk to the metro platform takes ages because the railway station has been moved from where it used to be, and it’s not doing me very much good at all.

One of these days I’m going to have to find an alternative route.

At the Gare du Nord I didn’t have long to wait to board my train.

With them having to check the vaccination certificates they opened the gates to the platform 25 minutes before departure rather than the usual 15 minutes.

The train today is, as usual, a couple of the TGV Inoui Reseau Duplex trainsets and for a change, I was sitting on the lower deck. Once more, I had a companion but like the one that I had on the earlier train, he didn’t say a word.

To pass the time on the journey, I was reading a University thesis on the creation of the system of Kingships in early Anglo-Saxon Britain.

When we arrived at Lille Flanders I had to walk the whole length of the train down to the exit.

The trainset at the front was another identical one of the TGV Reseau Duplexes and I took a photo of it as I left the station. And then I had to walk across town to the Lille Europe railway station.

Once again, the train came into the station just as I did, and once again I ended up with another companion.

She didn’t turn up until the train was almost due to depart, by which time I was settled down comfortably with all of my stuff everywhere and we had quite a pantomime for her to take her seat.

At the Gare du Midi at Brussels there was quite a queue to leave the platform because the escalator was out of action.

That gave me plenty of time to go and photograph the train that had brought me here. It’s one of the TGV Reseau 38000 PBA (Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam) trainsets, and just one as well. A single 8-car trainset today. The holiday season must be over.

The crowds eventually thinned out and I could make my way down to the gallery underneath. No-one checking vaccination certificates or passports or anything, so I could wander off and find the train that was going to take me to Leuven.

There wasn’t all that long for me to wait until a train arrived for me.

It’s one of the “push me pull you” train sets that has come from Oostende and is on its way to Welkenraedt and Eupen. It was fairly empty and there was plenty of room for me to spread.

A couple of trips ago we’d gone past the sidings where they had parked up the redundant locomotives awaiting scrapping and the NIKON 1 J5 through the glass window in a rainstorm didn’t bring them out very well.

With the NIKON D3000 I was hoping for a better effort but we took the newer high-level lines past Schaerbeek station so I didn’t get to see them.

When we pulled into Leuven station I could walk down to the far end of the platform and photograph the locomotive that had been pushing us along.

It was one of the Class 18 workhorses of the Belgian railway network that handle most of the express trains these days. We’ve travelled on these dozens of times in the past.

Just outside at the back of the railway station is a supermarket and I picked up some drink and biscuits from there. As it happens, my hotel is actually on top of the supermarket so once I found the lift I didn’t have far to go to check in.

It’s been a very cloudy day today with scattered showers and here in Leuven there’s a heavy cloud overhanging the town.

At one point I was looking out of the window of my fifth-floor room and right at that moment a ray of sunshine came out through a small hole in the clouds. It was quite impressive.

As for my room, it’s a twin-bedded room with a TV and that’s your lot. Nothing in the way of facilities.

There is a nice shower though and after I washed my clothes I took full advantage of it. That was really nice and refreshing.

There’s a fritkot down the road from here so they made me a bag of chips and a salad wrap for tea.

It was right opposite the railway station and there was a good view of the train shed from where I was sitting. It looked really eerie all lit up in the dark.

Back here, I’ve written up my notes and now I’m off to bed for a very early night. And quite right too because my trip here has taken a lot out of me today.

The walk up to the hospital is something to which I’m not looking forward tomorrow, so I’m going to have a lie-in in the morning and gather up my strength ready to fight the good fight all the way to the hospital,