Tag Archives: crash out

Thursday 1st December 2016 -I HAD A …

… very bad night last night.

Well, sort-of-ish anyway.

Remember yesterday when I told you about that good book that I downloaded yesterday? So there I was last night reading it and I happened to notice the time. 03:30 it was.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been so deeply engrossed in a book like that, I have to say. I was well-away. But anyway, I closed down the laptop, turned off the light, and went to sleep – or, at least, tried to.

I must have dozed off eventually because it was the alarm that awoke me. And surprisingly, I didn’t feel too bad just then. I’d been on my travels too, although I don’t remember anything about it right now.

After breakfast, I lay down here on the bed and closed my eyes for 5 minutes in order to build up my strength ready to face the morning. Next thing that I knew, it was 11:20. i’d been out if it for over three hours. And serve me right too.

I’d missed the bank to pay my lodging, so I mustn’t forget under any circumstances to do that tomorrow. Otherwise I’ll be out on my aspidistra. And coming back from the shower room, I walked into the wrong room. I knew that I would end up doing that sooner or later. Did I say that I’m in a different room here? It’s the cheapest in the house but I have negotiated a good deal so I’m not complaining. It’s just not my usual room and so it’ll take some time to become used to it.

After lunch I cracked on a little with my pages on Happy Valley-Goose Bay. It’s amazing the stuff that has come on line since the last time that I researched into this in early 2011. Tons of stuff and I’m spoilt for choice these days.

Something else that I did this afternoon has shaped my plans for next week. You know that Caliburn was hit in the rear a few weeks ago and needs to be examined. And I’ve also been keen to go home for some time, just for old time’s sake.

And so I rang up the insurance and made an appointment with their expert for Tuesday afternoon. and it’s at Evaux-les-Bains, and so that means that I have to go home. And that’s what I’m going to do. I’m seeing Alison on Saturday afternoon, and so on Sunday morning I shall hit the road and head back.

My plan is to stop on Sunday night at Meaux, and on Monday night at Montlucon – a Première Classe each time. And then go and have Caliburn sorted out on Tuesday and go back home for a few days.

For tea I made a kidney-bean whatsit, with enough for tomorrow night. And then I’ve been searching on the internet. OH Leuven are playing away on Saturday night at Tubize, just south of Brussels. There’s a reliable train service which is quite interesting, as so seeing as I have never really been to Tubize, I’m thinking of it.

Or as William Shakespeare might have said “Tubize or not Tubize? That is the question!”

Tuesday 29th November 2016 – I’M BACK …

… in Leuven now after my two weeks in the hills.

I’m in a different room than usual, one that I’ve never slept in before and it’s cold in here. Flaming well freezing in fact. The heating only comes on at certain times of the day and of course that isn’t when I want it to be.

Mind you, it was cold this morning in the Ardennes. Minus 3.3°C and that was at about 10:30 when I went out to Caliburn ready to leave, and I had to scrape the windscreen. Winter is definitely here.

I had a good sleep for a change, awake quite early before the alarm, and first down the breakfast too. Before the staff again. I’d even had time for a shower and a shave and clean clothes.

After breakfast I paid up, did a few things here and there and then hit the road. The drive up here was uneventful except that I had to stop for fuel at Weilin and that was shockingly expensive, and I did some shopping in a Colruyt- the first time for probably 20 years. And I was impressed by how cheap everything was.

Caliburn is now in his little hidey-hole and I’m now back here, with a few things that I grabbed to bring with me. There’s much more that needs to come but I’ll do that bit by bit.

Lunch didn’t take long to fix and after that it was like Euston station in here with a couple of people bursting in. I had a bit of a doze and a snooze after my drive up here – I’m not as fit as I used to be as we all know.

For tea I made a curry with lentils and garlic and mixed veg, with enough for tomorrow. And now I’m having an early night here in Ice Station Zebra.

It’s hospital tomorrow.

Thursday 24th November 2016 – YOU’VE PROBABLY SEEN …

… the stuff about Bouillon that I put on line this morning.

You won’t have seen this photograph though.

It’s really something special, isn’t it? It’s the kind of thing that could only happen in Belgium, or maybe in Ireland or in Quebec. No restaurant anywhere else in the world would advertise “non-stop cooking” and then go on to inform us that it is closed on Tuesdays.

It was Wednesday too when I was there, remember, and it looked pretty closed to me then.

despite being whacked last night, it took me quite a good while to drop off to sleep last night. But when I was asleep I really was asleep and remember nothing at all.

I do however remember being on my travels though – I was making a film about something or other starring a girl. And while the content might have been inappropriate for audiences in the USA, there was nothing at all that would prevent it from being broadcast in Europe and most other places in the world. However I was having a great deal of trouble convincing the Americans to let me continue with the project.

When the alarm went off I had a huge struggle to leave the bed. But I was second down to breakfast and before the breakfast room was open too.

Later, back in my room, I had a little … errr … relax and then cracked on with Bouillon. Once that was on line, I cracked on with whatever I was doing about Labrador. I went outside for the bread that I bought yesterday and that was about that.

And I’ve made a remarkable discovery – a large document listing all of the ferry operations on the St Lawrence River and the Gulf of St Lawrence for the last 75 years or so. This is a magnificent find to be sure. I can get lost … "we wish you would" – ed … for years in this.

As well as this, I’ve also finally found a downloadable version of the diaries of George Cartwright – the man who opened up Sandwich Bay in Labrador during the period 1770-1785 and who named most of the geographical features in the area.

All in all, a good day.

Mind you, I have crashed out for an hour or so this afternoon after my butties and it was hard to recover from that. Yesterday’s exertions and the difficult night really got to me.

So now, having done some more research, I’m off to bed to catch up with my sleep.

But I’m beginning to have a major quandary.

The web pages that I’m working on were originally meant to be about my return to the Trans-Labrador Highway in 2014 and in 2015 with a little research to give some background information to where I’ve been.

What’s happening now is that I’m unearthing all kinds of gems that have been lost to history for ages and deliberately “overlooked” by modern politicians and commentators. I’m even amazed to discover that one of my pet “ideas” is far from new, having been proposed as far back as 1966 and deftly swept under the carpet on the grounds of cost, only to be trundled out 50 years later as a “new, revolutionary idea”.

And things like an established ferry company that was refused a licence to operate a boat because of a 25-year time limit (its ferry was 27 years old), and replaced by a new company whose ship was … err … 30 years old and is still going now, aged 46.

There’s tons of stuff like this.

Yes, looks like I’m going to be heading towards yet another major controversy with these pages, and this time on an international stage too.

Still, it keeps me out of mischief.

Saturday 19th November 2016 – AND APART FROM THE FACT …

… that I had a late night last night, I had a really good, uninterrupted sleep.I’d been on my travels too, concerning a search for two young boys, one of whom was discovered dead and the other one who was discovered alive.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was well away. and I wasn’t much better when it went off at 07:15. The chimes of the clock outside at 08:00 galvanised me into action and I soon joined the hordes of people at the breakfast tables.

Breakfast was over quickly and I was back upstairs to finish off a few things that I’d been doing. and then I came back here.

Three hours later, I still hadn’t been able to upload my blog from yesterday onto the internet. The connection here is totally rubbish. And it’s not my laptop that’s at fault because I’ve been checking the connection with the mobile phone. And that’s having the same issues as the laptop as far as connection goes. I found out subsequently that the connection here is a simple dial-up connection shared between 70-odd residents. Broadband hasn’t yet arrived here and the idea of installing a satellite system has totally gone over the head of the proprietor.

That isn’t the only argument that I’ve had here either. The brat finally touched the raw part of the nerves and I roared at its mother “I’m here to relax, not to play babysitter to your noisy brat” and she carted him off for a short while as I stormed off up to my room to eat my butty and to crash out.

This evening I went into Vresse sur Semois for a bag of chips, and discovered that there’s an internet connection in the cafe. I can see me going there again for a coffee and a use of their connection because this place really is now eating me up.

I came down here at 20:00 to check the news and upload today’s blog. It’s now 22:00 and I’ve not even read half of the news, never mind written my blog.

I am so fed up, but I can’t afford to go anywhere else.

Thursday 17th November 2016 – I THINK THAT I HAVE MADE A MISTAKE …

… with this hotel.

It looks really impressive from the outside, that’s for sure. But inside is a totally different story.

It’s a really bad parody of a 1960s coach-tour holiday hotel. The ground floor is crammed – and I do mean crammed – with furniture, much of which dates from the 1950s and looks as if it’s been sat on by Hattie Jacques for every day of that time.

There’s a 1970s-style radiogram complete with multi-stack record player, all covered in dust, stuck in a corner just like something out of a time-warp. And the endless tape of early-70s bubblegum music does nothing whatever to dispel the image.

And not only that, the owners have a little brat of about 4 who is the noisiest little brat that I have ever heard, and how no-one has gone out to drown him before now I really do not understand. and it’s now 22:48 as I type, and the brat is still not in bed. It’s a disgrace.

Yes, I’m still here at this time, and there’s a reason for this. There’s no internet in the bedrooms, only down in the bar. And it’s the worst internet connection that I have ever encountered. It makes mine back in the Auvergne look like lightning. I’ve been here for hours trying to do what normally takes 20 minutes to do back at home.

The room is as you would expect. It’s clean and tidy but it’s long-since passed its sell-by date. I have a bath and a shower attachment, but no shower curtain and so I’ll drown the place out before too long.

The place is also full of Dutch pensioners. all of the signs are in Dutch too, so that tells you what the place is really like.

The good side is that I’m paying just €40 per night for bed and breakfast, and I have no real complaint about the breakfast. But that’s it. I’m really disappointed by all of this.

But at least I managed yet another “sleep of the dead” last night. Out like a light and I remember absolutely nothing at all.

Except of course that I had been on my travels. It had been a “Men from the Ministry” episode where N°1 and N°2 had gone off to a meeting and I had remained behind to cook tea. I made a curry, although there wasn’t much to make it with and ended up having to use bean sprouts. Eventually n°2 came back and we waited and waited for n°1 to come back. When he finally arrived he insisted that n°2 make him some sandwiches immediately. At that I exploded, After all that I had done to make the food and after all the waiting around that we had done and there he was issuing all the orders like this and all the food that I stayed behind to cook was now heading for the bin.

Downstairs for breakfast afterwards (it doesn’t start until 08:00) and then back to my room for a few hours until the cleaners threw me out. That’s when I came down here to discover exactly how bad the internet really is.

As for the village of Vresse sur Samois, it looks very pretty from up here and quite rightly so. But there’s another story to tell about it.

The boulangerie? Closed!
The bank? Closed!
The Post Office? Closed!
The grocery shop? Closed!

There are several hotels that have closed down and are up for sale too.

There’s a hotel that does pizzas, a butchers that is only open on Fridays and Saturdays, and a fritkot that is only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

I had to drive about 8 miles until I found a boulangerie and they had next-to-nothing in the way of bread either.

One thing that the town does have going for it is Le Belge. Le Belge was a locomotive built in 1835 by Cockerill’s of Seraing for the Brussels-Mechelen railway (the first modern railway line in mainland Europe)

She was the first locomotive to be built in Belgium – all of the previous ones used in the country were built by Stephenson’s in the UK

This isn’t of course the original – that’s long-been transformed into a couple of dozen baked-bean tins. It’s not even a replica as such – that’s in the railway museum in Schaerbeek.

This is actually a clever reconstruction, built to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Belgian independence, and although you might not believe it, it’s actually made of wood.

And why it’s here in Vresse-sur-Samois? I’ve really no idea at all.

I went for a good walk around the town, and to be honest it didn’t take me all that long because neautiful though the place might be, there isn’t all that much to see here.

I did find something that looked as if at one time it might have been a ford across a tributary of the Semois. it has allof the characteristics to me. But the road on this side of the river looks as if it’s been abandoned for a century or more.

There’s a magnificent bridge across the Semois just here – a real work of art. and it looks to me as if it’s a widened modern reconstruction of a much older bridge. There are quite a few traces of a much older construxtion having been worked into it.

And there’s Caliburn just down there to the right, parked up by the water’s edge. He’s certainly enjoying his couple of weeks out and about. and who can blame him after having been cooped up in that hangar in Leuven?

I crashed out after I came back here, and then I needed to think about food. Having had butties for lunch, I’ve had butties for tea too and this is likely to be a regular occurrence. And having dealt with the major issues of the hotel and its scabby internet connection I’m off to bed.

I hope that I have as good a rest tonight as I had last night.

Tuesday 15th November 2016 – YOU MISSED …

… all of the excitement last night.

I was just about getting ready to go to bed when my bedroom door burst open and someone came in dragging a big suitcase behind him.

It turned out that due to a transcription error he had received an e-mail telling him to go to room 1302 instead of 1202. We soon sorted that problem out, but it wasn’t half exciting while it lasted. I keep on meaning to lock the door to my room when I’m in here and one day I’ll remember to do it.

During the night I went on my travels, both down the corridor and out on my travels. I ended up on the Coasts of Labrador again but why and who with I really have no idea now.

There were the usual crowds at breakfast and I shan’t be sorry to leave here tomorrow for some peace and quiet – always assuming that I can in fact leave. I really hope that I can and they don’t want me back in a week. That’s going to be pretty impossible. Even going home for two weeks only leaves me a week or so down there to sort myself out and I need much more than that.

After breakfast, I found to my dismay that the internet it down. I don’t know why but everyone came to me to complain. They must think that I own the place or something. It seems that, according to the message that I saw on the communal computer, that the bill hadn’t been paid for a while. The landlord needs to deal with that problem pretty quickly.

It gave me a good opportunity to crack on with my web pages about the Trans Labrador Highway. As a result, I have now finished my pages about the Coasts of Labrador and now I’m starting to climb up onto the Eagle Plateau. If I keep on like this, I’ll be finished before too long, and then I’ll have to find something else to do.

I had my baguette for lunch in the company of another new arrival. He’s the first foreign person whom I’ve ever met who approves of the Brexit, but then again he was rather weird. He complained at great length that he had been expelled from Belgium and had lost absolutely everything. Now he had moved out to Occupied Palestine and was living in one of these unlawful settlements. The irony of his position had gone right over his head.

In contrast to the last couple of days I’ve been out on several occasions today. Apart from the baguette, I went down to Caliburn twice. The first time was to take down there everything that I don’t need this evening or tomorrow at the hospital. And I went through all of the clothes in Caliburn and brought back all of the dirty clothes, as well asa change of clean clothes.

And when I returned I had a really good shower and shave and a change of clothes. Once I’d organised myself properly (which takes for ever of course) I went off to the launderette and washed all of the clothes and now everything is all ready for my next voyage.

There was a very nice girl in there doing a big load of washing too. Under normal circumstances I would have engaged her in conversation to see what happens, but then again any girl who can’t afford a washing machine isn’t likely to be able to keep me in the luxury to which I would like to be accustomed.

After tea, in which I wasn’t alone yet again, I went back to Caliburn to take back the now-clean clothes and everything else that I don’t need. All that remains here now is what I’ll need for the hospital tomorrow.

So now it’s an early night for me. Whatever will tomorrow bring?

I hope that it’s good news. I need it, I reckon.

Monday 14th November 2016 – I MADE IT …

… out of doors for a bit longer today. In fact I went to the Bistro up the road to pay for my accommodation for this week, seeing as how it’s been closed for the last couple of days. And then I walked up to the Delhaize for a few bits and pieces.

That’s about it, really. I haven’t done much else.

My night was rather a disturbed one, not being helped by an early riser in the building who was up and about before I was. And I don’t even remember going anywhere – either of on a nocturnal perambulation or for a stroll down the corridor.

There are also some new people here – another group of three students. They are disturbing my usual routine, joining me for breakfast and also using the kitchen when I want to cook my tea. How dare they do that! GRRRRR!

Apart from that, I’ve been left pretty much to my own devices today – not even too many of my friends on the internet for a chat either. All in all, a pretty lonely day.

One thing that I had been doing was to work on my web pages for my last Labrador visits. It’s slow going right now because I’m continually being side-tracked by my research that is drifting me off into all kinds of alleyways off my main highway. I may be none-the-wiser, but I’m certainly better-informed these days. No arguments about that.

And as usual these days, I crashed out for a good hour or so round about 16:00. I’m clearly not up to it these days and it’s causing me some dismay. But I’ll have to become used to it I suppose. I won’t ever be any better than this.

So now I’ll go to see if the kitchen is clear, so that I can cook my tea for tonight. I hate being disturbed like this.

And tomorrow I shall have to get a move on. I’m going to do a pile of washing tomorrow and so that means a trip to Caliburn. I want to be all done and dusted and properly organised because I really am hoping that that I’ll be released for a fortnight so that I can go home for a week or so.

Friday 11th November 2016 – I’VE ONLY BEEN …

… out of the building twice today.

Once was to the supermarket for my baguette this morning, and the second time was to go back out to the supermarket tonight for a black plastic storage crate that I saw in the rubbish. Unfortunately I’d forgotten about it so it was rather too late when I went out there, and it had already disappeared.

Ahhh well!

And it’s Wapenstilstand – Armistice day today so most of the shops were closed. Even though it was only 08:45 when I went for my baguette, there were only three left. That was pretty good timing, I reckon.

Apart from that, I’ve been talking to friends on the laptop, spent some time working on my web pages about the Coasts of Labrador, and … errr … had a little doze too.

Tea was the rest of last night’s kidney bean whatsit with pasta followed by one of these soya-based coconut dessert things.

Last night though I had something of a disturbed night, although my bed is quite comfortable and I’m reasonably-well installed here. And I was on my own for breakfast which makes a nice change. But it’s quite noisy now as a group of people has just arrived.

I hope that I have a good night’s sleep tonight then.

Thursday 10th November2016 – I HAD RATHER A …

… restless night last night. It took me ages to drop off to sleep. And then I was awake long before the alarm went off.

Nevertheless, I hadn’t had to leave my bed during the night and no only that, I’d had a busy night being away on my travels. And, as usual these days, the whole lot disappeared the moment I awoke.

I was on my own at first for breakfast but I was soon joined by some others. I wasn’t that much alone. And back here afterwards, I couldn’t find the motivation to start on my website. Concentration and motivation seem to be lacking right now and I don’t know why after my successes just recently.

By the time 11:00 came round, I went off to Caliburn to sort out some of the stuff that i’ll need here for the next week, and then down to the Carrefour by the football ground to pick up some sandwich stuff.

On the way back here I went via Caliburn to pick up the stuff that I had sorted out, and found later on when I was making my tea that I had forgotten a storage container for the other half of tea for tomorrow.

After lunch I had a good chat with two or three people and I also crashed out for a while. And not only that, I did manage to do some kind of work on my website.I also went down to the bistro to pay for my lodgings but once more, there was no-one there.

For tea I made pasta, kidney beans, veg and tomato sauce thickened with boulghour. And there’s half left for tomorrow which I had to leave in the saucepan as I didn’t have anywhere else to leave it.

I also had a chat with the landlord of this place about my ongoing health problems. He might be able to work out a good deal for me if I stay here. And I might just accept it too because I don’t really know where else to go for the next three or four months that I might have to stay here.

I’ll have to think long and hard about this.

Monday 7th November 2016 – I WASN’T …

… the first down at breakfast this morning.

Just for a change, I had a good sleep with just one trip down the corridor, and was still asleep when the alarm went off. I’d been a-travelling too, but once again, don’t ask me where I went to because once again, it all disappeared immediately after I awoke.

Plenty of time for a quick shower and shave and then downstairs for breakfast bang on 07:30, to find that while I was the only person in there, several of the tables,including my favourite, were littered with dirty crockery and cutlery. I had to sit somewhere else

At about 10:30 I went out into town for my daily baguette. And as I came to the pedestrian zone, this sign caught my eye. It lists everything that you are not allowed to do in the city, as far as local by-laws go, and the penalties that you can incur.

So “use of alcohol in a public place”, “leaving litter”, “urinating” and “letting your dog foul the street” can cost you between €59 to €250.

“Being drunk in public”, “Being under the influence of drugs”, “fighting” and “the bearing of arms” will result in a court appearance.

And so you have been warned.

Americans like to brag that they invented the shopping mall – undercover shopping galleries – but that’s far from the truth.

The first undercover shopping gallery dates from the Middle Ages and is in Brussels – we’ve visited it on several occasions during the past. And here’s another Belgian shopping gallery, in Oostende. You never saw an American shopping mall looking as nice as this.

And why is shopping in North America so boring? Well, when you’ve seen one bunch of shops you’ve seen a mall.

I walked all the way down the pedestrian street to the docks to see what was happening down here. But never mind that for a moment – have you noticed the sky? We have a pile of blue sky there and not a cloud in the sky.

And do you remember that pile-driver that we saw in the pedestrian street on Saturday? Going past it this morning, I noticed that it had grown a little higher and there were a few extra bits attached. It’s now a crane.

Crossing over the road, I took a photo of the docks looking the other way. The sea is down there.

Also down there is the station building, although the trains don’t stop there now. They pull up about 50 yards short – you can see the modern roof of the train shed on the right-hand edge of the photo.

The building was also the interchange for the cross-channel boats. Oostende was formerly a very important cross-channel ferry port and in the period 1846-1997 all of the passengers passed through the 1913 building there or through a previous building on the site.

Having been to the Delhaize to buy a baguette and some grapes, I went for a walk along the promenade again.

When I was here in 2014 there was a great deal of building work being undertaken hereon the beach. And now, they seem to have finished it. They have erected a huge new sea wall here as you can see on the left of the photo. There was a walkway along it and so I reckoned that I would go for a walk down to the end.

From halfway down the walkway on top of the new sea wall, there was a really good view of the sea front.

I first came to Oostende in the mid-1970s and anyone who hasn’t been here since those days won’t recognise it at all. It’s changed quite considerably since the 1980s when I spent several happy weeks here with Nerina and again when I was driving coaches for Shearings. Almost all of the places that I knew have been swept away.

The port of Oostende had declined considerably over the last 20 years. The port down there used to be heaving with ships and there was always something going on.

However ferries no longer leave here for the UK since Transmanche Ferries went into liquidation in 2013 and the port installations are slowly declining. There’s just the odd cruise ship that calls here now – we saw one of those in 2014 – and there’s the odd ship laid up in there every now and again.

This is really all that you can hope to see today unless you are very lucky. It looks as if it’s a fishing boat, heading out of the port on its way to the North Sea.

Fishing is quite an important part of the way of life of Oostende and a great deal of fish are landed here. I talked about the fishmarket here when we went for a walk around the town on Saturday. It’s one of the major attractions of the town.

Here’s another shot of the sea front here at Oostende. Again, it’s all totally different from 20 years ago.

There’s a monument there – a huge one of a sailor looking out to sea and is a memorial to all of those who set out to sea and never came back. As for what are hidden by the orange covers, I really have no idea. I imagine that I’ll have to come back in the summer for a better look.

But you can see what Oostende is so popular with holidaymakers and tourists. The beaches really are magnificent.

The new sea wall, upon which i’m standing, will shelter this beach, hopefully from the wind and definitely from the rough waves, and this will encourage more tourists to visit here.

By the way, the entrance to the port is just there to the left, with the harbour entrance light on the end.

Here’s the new harbour entrance, with the new sea wall just here where I’m standing and on the other side of the entrance is a nice, new harbour entrance light that looks as if it’s made of concrete.

The entrance looks rather narrow to me and I suppose that it’s a good job that ferries and large ships no longer sail into the port. It doesn’t make for comfortable manoeuvring

So here I am, right down at the end of the harbour. I can’t go any farther than here and so i’ll have tu turn back.

But you’ve noticed in one of the earlier photos we had a beautiful-ish blue sky, and you will also notice that the further around we have walked, the more the weather has closed in.

As I was out here at the end of the sea wall, the weather finally broke and it started to rain heavily. That put an end to my walk and I headed back to the hotel. I’d been out for two hours, which is pretty good going just recently.

By the time I returned to the hotel I was soaked and thoroughly fed up. I’m not having the best of the weather. I made my butty and then attacked the next stage of my website – to write up what happened on my trips around the Trans-Labrador Highway in 2014 and 2015 – and hoping that I might be able to make another trip in 2017 if I can to see what further changes have been made since my previous visit.

But that wasn’t all I did – or didn’t, as the case may be. I ended up crashing out for half an hour too, as well as having a chat with Liz on the internet.

I went out for coffee at 17:00 but do you know – not a single cafe on the front in the vicinity of the hotel was open. Well – one was open but the barman said that it was closed. I had a coffee in the lounge in here instead.

For tea, I went to a falafel place that I had discovered while I was on my travels. It was pretty good too although, like everywhere else in Oostende, it’s more expensive than in Leuven.

So now, I’ll have an early night. Tomorrow is my last full day here and I have things to do.

Friday 4th November 2016 – OOOH LOOK!

I’m at the station at Leuven again aren’t I? And I’m about to hit the rails.

I didn’t have to stagger very far from my hotel – just down the steps and into the tunnel. There’s a ticket machine there, and it wasn’t working so I had to go to the booking office and make my reservation. And then a quick dash round to my platform where the train for Kortrijk was just pulling in.

Mind you, I wasn’t going to Kortrijk – not at all.

I had something of a restless night again last night – woke up with the bedclothes all over the floor at one point. But a nice hot shower soon put me right.

A glance out of the window wasn’t all that promising. The weather looked rather miserable but never mind. No sense in hanging around. And so I made my excuses and left. Mind you, I do have to say that at €49:00 the Ibis Budget did all that it said that it would. The rooms are small and pokey of course but they are scrupulously clean and tidy and everything works like it should.

I have no complaints whatever and would happily stay there again

Here’s another train and it has ANTWERPEN CENTRAAL displayed in the headboard. But I’m not going to Antwerp either.

I alighted from my Kortrijk train at Ghent St Pieters station, crossed over to the next platform and stepped into the train that was waiting there, having just come in from Antwerp. And now here I am, taking a photograph of my train after we arrived at … Oostende.

I walked through the streets of Oostende to find my hotel, which is out by the Kursaal Casino.

And don’t you think that people are taking this craze of photographing and filming even the most banal and uneventful moments of their private lives to post on the internet is going far too far? And this craze for miniaturisation – can things go any smaller?

And personally, the way that the world is going, I’m surprised that it’s closed.

While you admire the beautiful sunny weather that we are having here in Oostende, let me tell you a little about my hotel.

It’s called the Hotel Imperial, quite an upmarket three-star hotel just 50 metres from the seafront. It’s quite an expensive place normally, and it looks it too, but it does have a few rooms usually reserved for coach parties (as I remember from my coach-driving days with Shearings) up in the garret – tiny but well-appointed and I negotiated a good deal – €300 for five nights, breakfast included.

The walk-in price for the room would have been … gulp … €160 per night.

and I’m lucky that there even was a room free too. It’s Toussaint, the Belgian schools’ half-term holidays and the town is pretty crowded, as you can tell by looking at the promenade here.

The hotel where I was hoping to stay, right on the edge of the docks, is fully-booked, as are many of the other places too.

But I’ll tell you much more about what the Hotel Imperial is like when I’ve had a good go at the breakfast tomorrow. The first breakfast is always a key moment in anyone’s holiday.

I went to grab a bag of chips and to join the crowds on the promenade for a walk in order to inhale the ozone. But the weather was quite nasty as you can see. There was a wind, a misty haze and light drizzle. I didn’t stick it out for long, as the old ecclesiastical gentleman once said to the thespian. I came back to my room.

I did some work on my website, fell asleep, chatted to a friend and all that kind of thing, and then went for tea. Food is much more expensive in Oostende rather than Leuven, and it’s nothing like as well prepared. I had a disappointing vegetarian durum tonight, and I’ll have to do much better than that tomorrow. I do recall complaining about the food last time that I was here.

So now it’s an early night in my comfortable bed. I’m looking forward to a good sleep and a first-class breakfast.

I’ll tell you tomorrow if I received it.

Sunday 30th October 2016 – IT GOES FROM BAD …

… to worse.

Luckily, it’s something that hasn’t happened to me (except only indirectly) but I’m involved in this as much as anyone else.

Terry needed to move the mini-digger and asked me ages ago if he could borrow my Indespension plant trailer to do the job, to which I agreed. Then a day or two ago he told me that he would be round at my place this morning, but the penny didn’t drop.

Later this afternoon, I had a phone call. There’s a puncture on the trailer. Well, I had no idea that he was planning to move it today. And where is the puncture? Why, it’s about 200 miles away from home. I had no idea that he was going to go that far.

Of course, there’s no spare wheel. That was one of the things that I had intended to resolve over the winter, as well as fitting all of the rear lights that I had bought for it so that I could bin the trailer-board on the back, but as you know, I was otherwise occupied with my serious health issues and I’ve never been home since.

If you have insurance on your trailer you can call for assistance, but that’s another thing that never entered my mind seeing as how I am in no position to move it anywhere right now.

And of course, it’s Sunday, so now Terry is stranded. But luckily there’s a hotel near to where he is.

Tomorrow he needs to take the wheel off the trailer and take it to be repaired or replaced, but to do that, he needs to take the digger off the trailer. But there’s no diesel in the digger so he’ll have to go off and organise that first thing tomorrow. Except that he doesn’t have a fuel can.

As you can see, it’s another thing that has come to try us just now. When is all of this going to end?

I was asleep really early last night but my neighbours awoke me when they came in and they had the television on – not loud, I hasten to add, but I could hear it vaguely in the background. And once I did drop off, I had to go off twice down the corridor.

I’d been on my travels too, but I don’t have a clue about where I went or what I did. It all evaporated the moment that I awoke.

And wasn’t I organised today? Breakfasted, down to the boulangerie for my baguette and back here, all befor 07:45. that’s something of a new world record. But I spent most of the day drifting in and out of sleep. I had a good chat with Liz and Rosemary today and I’ve also been attacking the website. You remember that I travelled along the Trans-Labrador Highway when it was completed in 2010 and my account of that journey has been on line for a few years.

But as you recall, if you are a regular reader of this rubbish, that I’ve done the journey twice since, once in 2014 and again in 2015 – both time is the opposite direction from east to west. There have been so many changes to the route that I’m going to write another book about it. And so I’ve started to merge all of the reports and photos into one.

That’s going to take me a good while, I reckon. Not the work of five minutes, that’s for sure, so don’t expect to see daily updates on line. .

It’s Sunday and so for tea tonight I had a pizza. Spinach and mushrooms and it was delicious. Best that I’ve had.

But now, I’m going to try for an early night. My body clock will be up the spout because of the change of hour, so I hope that I’m not disturbed.

Saturday 29th October 2016 – IT NEVER RAINS …

… but it pours, doesn’t it?

I decided that in order to changer mes idées, as the French so aptly put it, I’d go out of town this lunchtime and do my shopping out at Kessel-LO, to give me a good opportunity to have a wander around.

And the net result of my external perambulations?

The Fortis Bank there has swallowed my bank card.

That’s all that I need, isn’t it? Lurching from one disaster to another while I’m here this last two or three weeks. I’m getting totally fed up of this. It’s about time that something went right with me for a change.

But at least I’d managed to go to Bio-Planet and buy some more vegan cheese and a beautiful baguette, as well as helping myself to the free samples and the complementary coffee. I bought some stuff (but nothing exciting) in Carrefour that I need to tide me over until Thursday when (hopefully) I’ll leave here and I had a good look around in Krefel to see what they had in the way of electrical appliances. But there was nothing that particularly excited me.

Last night, it didn’t take me long to go to sleep. And once I was asleep, I stayed asleep (except for one trip down the corridor). I awoke about 5 minutes before the alarm, and for once, I was washed and breakfasted and back in my room by 07:45.

My voyage last night was something of a strange parallel to real life. I was somewhere in north-west England, Lancaster or the like, and I had a few days spare. I was torn between going back home to Crewe for a short while or finding somewhere to stay up there. The idea of going to Silloth appealed to me, but I had a look at the map, which was in a holder up above my head in Caliburn and found the town of Oxenhope right on the coast not too far from where I was (and Oxenhope is of course miles away from the sea in real life) I could see that it was fairly large with a port and harbour, with a main street running along the front and so I reckoned that I would go there. But I couldn’t get Caliburn to start – and that was painful. We also had two children – rather like two kids that I know in real life – and they appeared on my voyages for some reason or other.

After breakfast, I had a little doze and did a few bits and pieces and round about 11:30 I wandered off down to Caliburn and out to Kessel-Lo.

Back here, it ended up being a late lunch and then I attacked the web site again. I’ve been working on it again and I’ve amended three web pages, this one, this one and this one. Stuff from my 2015 voyage needed to be added into the first two pages, and that led to adjustments on the third page.

I had a good chat with Liz and another one of my friends on the internet too. It’s certainly been a marvellous invention, hasn’t it?

Tonight, I finished off my curry from yesterday and now I’m planning on yet another early night. i’ll hopefully make the most of it because the clocks go back tonight. Back 100 years for those of you who voted for the Brexit.

But for me, it means that I might have an extra hour in bed asleep.

But I’ve heard all of that before.

Friday 28th October 2016 – I’VE HAD A BAD DAY TODAY

In fact, I’ve spent most of it asleep.

It all probably stems from last night. I told you that I was going to have an early night, and indeed I did. And I wasn’t awake long either. Soon away with the fairies.

The trouble was that it didn’t last long. I was awake after about an hour and with people coming and going throughout the house and talking in raised voices, I couldn’t go back to sleep again. I ended up working on two pages of my website, adding some stuff from 2015 – this one and this one.

I was eventually able to go off to sleep and I slept right through until the alarm went off. It was something of a stagger up to breakfast, and then back down here I lay on the bed and dozed.

I missed my little window to go and pay for my room, as I was fast asleep during the bistro’s lunchtime opening hours. But I did manage to make it to the supermarket on the corner to buy some stuff for lunch. So much for the mega-shop that I had planned, and so much for my trip to the footy ground to buy my ticket for tomorrow night (it’s an all-ticket match). I’ve missed the football for this weekend then.

I spoke a little to Liz this afternoon, and worked on another page of my website. This is astonishing, isn’t it? I dunno where this motivation is coming from.

But apart from that, I was back asleep for most of the afternoon. Until I had a rude awakening from the cleaner that is. Now I have clean bedding and a reasonably clean room.

The bistro was closed this evening when I went past – I went to Caliburn to pick up some food. For tea I had a mushroom curry with rice and it was so delicious. And there’s enough for tomorrow too. And tonight I had another doze too.

But now I’m off to bed. There are hordes of new arrivals this weekend so I hope that they all behave themselves.

Wednesday 26th October 2016 – SO HERE I AM …

… my last night in Leuven.

For a while, I hope. But even if it’s only for two or three weeks, I’m leaving for home anyway as soon as I an discharged from the hospital. I have stuff that I need to do back there and I can’t leave it any longer. And now that I’ve had Caliburn’s wheel bearing fixed, there’s no reason for me to stay.

After last night’s perturbations it took me ages to go off to sleep. And I had to leave the bed twice for a trip down the corridor. Not only that, I’ve no idea if I went off on a ramble. I can’t recall a thing.

It was a struggle to leave the bed, as you might expect. And after breakfast I had one of these eye-closing sessions. I wasn’t away with the fairies, but it was near enough.

Once I’d had another coffee to wake me up, I started work on my website again. And now we have this page and this page on line. And if I don’t fall asleep before bedtime, there might be another page on line before the end of the day today.

I had a good chat on line with a couple of people while I was working, and I also crashed out for half an hour this afternoon. And that was really nice too. The sun is lower in the sky and now shines underneath the top of the window. It was gloriously sunny and warm, and the rays of sunshine were shining right on me. It was beautiful.

I’d had some good luck today when I was out buying my baguette. The supermarket had thrown a couple more plastic food-trays into the skip. I went out later in the evening after tea to have a look at them and apart from being rather dirty, they were in good condition – not damaged at all.

Anyway, they have now been added to the stock and I might even have enough for the little project that I have in mind that includes a visit to IKEA and the purchase of a pile of cardboard boxes.

All of this depends upon what the hospital has to tell me tomorrow. If I’m still on two-weekly visits I’ll be well-and-truly sunk without a doubt. But I’m hoping that it’ll be much better news than this.

And so i’m going to have an early night and see what tomorrow will bring me.

EPIC HALL

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