… 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.

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