Tag Archives: oostende

Wednesday 20th June 2018 – THE WORLD’S WORST BANK …

… strikes again!

Remember that letter that I had to fax them yesterday? It seems that I had forgotten something off it.

And yes, I freely admit that it was my error. No argument there.

The bank sent me an e-mail and asked me to rectify the omission. No problem there either.

BUT

I had to reply by fax yet again. I couldn’t do it by phone, and I couldn’t reply to their e-mail either. Even though they had referred to my request in the e-mail that they had sent me, that it would be clear that any reply that I sent would have been in reply to their mail, and that the information was information that they had requested.

So that was yet more wasted time.

Like I say, I’m not denying my responsibility. I’m just moaning about the bank’s procedures. Had I still have been in the UK they would have been kicked into touch a good while ago. But then, had I still been in the UK, I would never have had the issues that I’m having now.

Last night, I didn’t get to see my film. I ended up going to bed fairly early instead. I was hoping to have an early night, but waking up at 03:45 was no part of my intentions whatsoever.

So much so that after breakfast I sat down and ended up being … errr … away with the fairies for a good half an hour.

But I pulled myself through, did some more tidying up and even vacuumed the living room, as well as measuring up a few things here and there, because I’m having a day out tomorrow.

Or, at least, I’m hoping to, if I can find the road.

On my trip into town this afternoon we were lucky to see the harbour. We’ve been swathed in a hanging cloud all day and it hasn’t lifted for a minute. It’s even worse right now.

If it keeps on like this, I won’t even be able to find my way out of the building, never mind out of town.

Having dealt with the housekeeping issues for today (Friday is to deal with the kitchen and Saturday is to wash the floor to let it dry while I’m out at the shops) I went back to the blog again.

The current whereabouts of my amendments is the day that I left Leuven to travel to Oostende. That page is not quite finished (although it might be by the time you read this) but it’s all now done from there onwards.

I’m determined to bring it all up to date before I’m much older, having left it somewhat … errr … incomplete during my all-too-frequent bouts of illness.

No point in going out for lunch today in the hanging cloud. I stayed in and read my book in the peace and quiet.

And then I had to fiddle about with the printer in order to make it work. It’s an ancient Hewlett-Packard that I inherited from Marianne all those years ago. It had an enormous amount of use while she had it, and it’s done some work here over the five years that I’ve had it. So it’s quite temperamental.

And so off into town.

We’ve seen the hanging cloud, but I don’t think that you have seen the workmen down in the bottom-right corner who have now started on another house down on the rue du Port.

It’s difficult to tell whether they are knocking holes in the walls to fit new windows, or whether they are trying to knock the walls down completely. I suppose that time will tell.

Having seen my friendly newspaper shop owner and sent off the fax, I came back up the hill.

And over in the port, another gravel lorry had arrived and had tipped its load. And behind it there was a digger driver busily heaping it all up into a tidy pile on the edge of the quayside.

Not in the gravel bins, you’ll notice. So that can really only mean that another gravel boat will shortly be paying us a visit. And I hope that I’m here to see it.

But I learnt some bad news in the newsagents. Madame la Maire has finally published her proposals for the port. She wants to build another casino and another pile of restaurants down there.

That means, quite simply, that all of the empty shops in the town will immediately be transformed into the kind of expensive boutiques that you see in every other seaside town – vastly overpriced for two months of the year and closed, gathering dust for the other 10.

And the port, instead of being a working, industrial zone, will become a haven for luxury yachts for 2 months of the year and deserted for the remainder.

It will totally destroy the character of the town, but such is the price that one has to pay for a bit of egoism.

And it did not go unnoticed that the proposals weren’t published until after the series of meetings with the residents (one of which we attended last week).

So that was my afternoon walk, and I crashed out yet again for a while. A coffee soon revived me though, and I had a good 50-minute session on the bass guitar. I’m cracking on.

After tea, which was a frozen mushroom and pepper curry in coconut milk, I went for my walk. And managed 120 paces at a run (well, a sort-of run). And if there was anyone else out there, I wouldn’t have an idea in this weather.

So now I’ll do a few bits and pieces and then have another early night.

And I hope that it’s more successful than the last one.

Saturday 9th June 2018 – THIS IS TURNING INTO A DISASTER

And I’m not quite sure about where to start either.

I could, I suppose, make a start by telling you all about last night’s nocturnal ramble. And that was such a confused, jumbled, rambling voyage too and I’ve probably forgotten most of it.

But I do remember leading a party of other motorists to Granville but it was nothing like the Granville as we know it, and the road to there was even more different. Doing it in the semi-dark was another thing too, especially as there were no signposts. However I had been there once before and I could remember the way – at least everything looked familiar like the roundabout near the yacht harbour where we had to turn left. At a certain moment we left the main road and were driving along a farm track where there was suddenly a terrific drop. I remembered a drop, but nothing as terrific as this one but it had to be here because there was no other way that resembled this. Everyone else looked in a panic but I pressed on down the slope and it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be.
At some other time during the night I ended up in Bill Badger, my old BMC half-ton van from the 1970s. I’d put it back on the road after more than 20 years and it was running fine. I’d done some work on the engine too and that had me thinking about “why don’t I find a BMC 1622 diesel engine and fit that in the vehicle?”
From there I drifted into YLO, my first Cortina mkIV and I was going round to visit some sportsman. Much to my surprise he was living in very modest circumstances, the only sign of affluence being a small sailing boat in his garden that he was restoring. There was a notice on the gate to the effect that “no matter what, the boat isn’t for sale so don’t waste my time and yours enquiring”. He explained to me that his wife had just given birth and people always though that when you were there with new family commitments that took up much of your time, your hobbies would be the first to go, and go quickly and cheap too. I sympathised, explaining that I had a Transit van and another vehicle up on ramps in my garden right now.
Somewhere in all of this my mother put in an appearance. I’m not sure why. She was being assailed by a couple of women and even though I had no time for her at all, I couldn’t help feeling some sympathy for what she was suffering.

So there I was, at 05:20 sitting on the edge of the bed typing out all of this before I forgot it, despite the fact that with a long and exhausting day ahead of me, I needed all the sleep that I could get.

So an early breakfast etc, and organising myself, packing and the like. Ant at 08:30 I was at the supermarket buying a bottle of drink and a baguette.

Having made my butties I went off to hand in my keys and book the room for my next session, giving a big stroke to the cat on my way past.

It was here that today all started to go wrong, if you don’t consider awakening at 05:20 to be wrong.

My next visit here coincides with the big Werchter Rock festival in mid-Belgium, so there is no room at the inn. Not at any other inn in the region so I have been told. And I can’t change my appointment at Castle Anthrax because it fits in nicely with my other arrangements. And I can’t book a hotel in Brussels because I’m in Caliburn and there’s nowhere reasonable to leave him.

But there’s always a Plan B. It’s been years since I’ve been to Liège and I hardly know the city so I might book a hotel there and that will give me an opportunity to go for a wander around the city. I might even at last get to visit Welkenraedt – something that I’ve been trying to do for 45 years since I first saw it as a train destination at Oostende in the early 70s

Not only that, it’s easy to escape from too – avoids the necessity to struggle through the traffic on the edge of Brussels. There’s a motorway that goes from there to France via Charleroi instead.

But it’s still annoying.

At the station I didn’t have to wait too long for a train. It was another Oostende train and so it was heaving with holidaymakers. I ended up being crammed into a corner with about 20 young German kids, several crates of beer and a music centre playing “oompah” music.

That was certainly not what I wanted at that time of the morning, but at least I had a seat. So I can’t complain too much. Especially as one of the boys actually offered me a beer (which I of course declined).

At the Gare du Midi I didn’t have to wait too long for the TGV to be called and to my surprise it was already in the station so we could take our seats and settle down in comfort.

But that was to no avail because the train didn’t move. After a while we were told to dismount. We were apparently having a “technical problem”. They called for a new trainset and they coupled that up to the next TGV so we were half an hour late leaving Bruxelles-Midi.

I went in search of the train manager and made a fuss about my connection to Granville. We had a lengthy discussion and in the end she endorsed my ticket to Granville to the effect that I would miss my train due to their fault and not mine.

We pulled into Gare du Nord 35 minutes late, not 30 minutes late – and that extra 5 minutes proved to be crucial as we shall see.

There’s an RER “express” that does part of the route of Metro Line 4 missing out several stations, so I gambled on that as far as Les Halles. It was indeed much quicker but whatever time I saved was lost by having a long walk between platforms so it wasn’t any quicker really. But I have timed the journey in the past going on Line 5 and then Line 4 and I know full well that I didn’t have enough time today so it was a gamble to nothing.

At Montparnasse I rushed as quickly as I could but it’s a long way, and I reached my platform just in time to see my train departing. For the first time since 1992 I wished that I was back in the UK where the trains run when they feel like it and only pretend that there’s a timetable.

This meant a trip all the way back to the ticket office. It’s possible to travel to Granville on the TGV to Rennes and then the Caen and Cherbourg train from there, alighting at Folligny where there’s a bus that connects with the train. But that goes at 14:14 and by the time I’d walked all the way back to the ticket office and queued to see a counter clerk, that train had long-gone.

The clerk wasn’t all that helpful and I was in no mood for her light-hearted attempts at laughter. She refused to consider finding me an alternative route (far too much effort of course) and so there was no alternative but to wait three hours for the next train.

Another marathon walk back to my platform where I ate my butties and read my book. And listened to the desperate news that “the train arriving from Granville” … which will be the one that will be taking me back … “has been delayed by 40 minutes due to a signal failure”.

But to give them their due, as soon as it arrived and the passengers alighted and the crew had checked it for lost property, we were immediately waved on board. They hadn’t had time to clean it so it was something of a mess, but I didn’t want to wait around for another half an hour. 10 minutes late was quite enough.

During the whole route back I was in something of a daze. That 05:20 start had done me no favours whatsoever and the marathon dash and consequent stress had made things even worse. I wasn’t in much of a state to pay much attention to what was going on.

To make things worse, in view of everything that had happened today I was going to treat myself to a bus back home. But the last bus goes at 20:00 and we arrived back at 20:10 so that was that i had to walk.

And to make things even worse, the only bakery open in the town at that time of night had sold out of bread and buns for tomorrow.

It was a very long drag up the hill and I was stopped by a couple of tourists who needed directions.

So back here after all of that and I’m not up to much at all. I couldn’t even face making any tea. I’m going to go to bed and sleep until I awake. After all, tomorrow is another day.

Wednesday 18th April 2018 – AND AN EARLY START …

… it was in the morning too.

never mind the alarm at 05:20 – I was wide-awake at 04:00. That is, of course, quite another thing from saying that I was out of bed at that time but at least it’s a relief to know that my body clock seems to be working when it has to.

I made my breakfast – a half-baguette with jam – and packed it in my rucksack for the journey along with the butties that I made afterwards.

By 06:00 i was ready to go and a brisk walk through the not-so-deserted streets (it seemed as if the whole town was heading to the railway station right now) brought me there in such good time that the previous train was still in the station. And so I leapt aboard.

It was quite empty when it left but by the time that it had stopped at Brugge and Gent St Pieters it was standing room only throughout the whole length of the train. Early rush hour of course and everyone was off to work.

But my early arrival had availed me nothing because there was no earlier train to the airport.

“Airport???” I hear you say. “What it all of this?”

Well, we’re having a change of plan and instead of leaping aboard the next available TGV to go home, I’m going on a little voyage. I didn’t mention that when I was in Leuven buying my shorts, something in a shop window across the road had caught my eye.

And so to the airport. I arrived in plenty of time, checked in, had a totally painless passage through security – and much as Ihave criticised the mentality of Belgian officialdom in the past, it’s only right that I say chapeau and wish that Canadian and USA border staff would take a leaf out of their book – and walked the endless miles of corridor to my departure gate.

And then walked half the way back because there was a gate change.

I’d been very lucky checking in. I used the old “bad leg” ploy (actually, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I do have issues with my leg) and was given an aisle seat, which was just as well because the plane was packed out with not a free seat anywhere. I had literally had the last ticket on the flight – as the Travel Agent had said.

And it was the oldest Airbus A320 I’ve ever been on. Piloted by Orville and Wilbur Wright, I had to move Amelia Earhart’s sandwiches off my seat before I could sit down.

And once we had settled down and taken off we all had to unsettle ourselves to search for documents papers and pens to fill in the applications for Visas. Why then couldn’t issue those with your boarding cards so that you could fill them out while waiting for the aeroplane to arrive is totally beyond me.

It was just as well that I had made my butties. I know that there’s a meal organised on the aeroplane but regular readers of this rubbish will recall that past experience has taught me never to rely on airline and tour companies to provide what I order. And so when I found out – just as I had expected – that there was no vegan meal on the plane for me, I didn’t worry.

The plane itself wasn’t that comfortable. We were crammed in like sardines but that didn’t worry me too much either. It’s a cheap tour package operator’s runabout and we weren’t going all that far anyway.

Two and a half hours later, we touched down. At Enfidha–Hammamet International Airport which, for the benefit of those of you who studied something other than geography, is in North Africa. Tunisia to be precise;

I’d seen a bargain last-minute offer to fly out to a holiday resort for a week in Sqanes on the Tunisian coast between Sousse and Monastir. All-inclusive, even down to the transport from the airport. Large air-conditioned room, balcony and sea view leaving, as you know, 5 days after I saw it and after a considerable amount of intense negotiations, knocked down to Yours Truly for all of €400.

And here I was. First off the plane, first through customs and immigration and sitting on a bench eating my butties waiting for the baggage.

I’d been saying for a while that the weather in Europe had been depressing all winter and how I wanted to go to the desert. Well, this was the best that I could do at short notice.

And while the weather in Western Europe had improved this last while, it seemed as if I had brought the bad weathe rover here with me.

There we were, loading ourselves up into the tour buses on the edge of the desert and in the background was this dirty black cloud hovering about quite ominously.

And, sad as it is to say it, we hadn’t driven more than a mile or two before it started to rain.

Yes, here in North Africa, in April on the edge of the desert, and it is raining. You couldn’t make up a story quite like that, could you? But then, I suppose that with knowing the way that things work out when I’m around you would have bet the mortgage on it.

Local farmers will be paying me a fortune to keep on coming back to the country, whereas the local Tourist Board will be denying me admisssion

Onto the motorway where tractors, bicycles and carts drawn by horses are prohibited.

But not herds of sheep and goats, so it seems. We would regularly pass a herd of sheep and/or goats, complete with shepherd and/or goatherd, on the hard shoulder nibbling away at what passes for greenery around here.

That’s the sheep and/or goats of course, not the shepherd and/or goatherd, although one never knows, of course.

In fact, it’s all very much as you might imagine that it would have been back in Biblical days.

Even the motor vehicles. And yes, they did have cars, and even motorcycles back in Biblical days.

Everyone knows that it clearly states in the Bible that the sound of Joshua’s Triumph was heard throughout the land, and later in the New Testament we read that the disciples were all in one Accord.

Sousse has always been one of the towns that I have wanted to visit, and for no other reason than the fact that I had actually heard about the place.

Unfortunately we didn’t get to go through the city itself, but round the outskirts where we were driven past the big University here.

But no matter. I’m sure that I can work out a way of going for a day out in the city once I get my bearings about the place

I’m not sure what I was expecting for a hotel. I know that, at the price that I paid, I wasn’t expecting all that much. And so my flabber has never been so gasted as it was when I saw it.

Firstly, it’s a gated compound and there are security guards who patrol the gate and the fences. But when you go inside you can see why.

It’s the holiday village to end all holiday villages and really must have been something quite impressive when it was built because today, even though it’s looking rather tired around the edges, it’s by far and away the best hotel in which I have ever stayed.

We were treated to a little cabaret by the … err … “Enjoyment Team” when we arrived and that, I’m afraid, got me off on the wrong foot.

I’m the wrong person to come on one of these tours because with having worked in the tourist industry for as long as I did, I’m immensely cynical about this kind of thing. I just wanted to get to my room.

And when I did, well, what can I say?

I can have a dance in my bedroom it’s so big. A family of 6 could sleep in the bed and it’s all a kind of five-star luxury even if it is a little worn in the corners.

And there really is a balcony, and there really is a sea view – and a proper sea view at that too, just as I had been promised. None of your craning your neck around a corner and leaning out dangerously, like you would get in many other hotels.

I threw open the windows really wide and let the sea air blow in around the room for quite some considerable time.

And then I … errr … had a little relax. It’s been a long day so far

Once I’d rejoined the Land of the Living I could go for another good look out of my window.

And it seems as if the sea isn’t the only attraction here either. There’s a whole series of swimming pools and I can see three of them – two just down there and one under cover that you can’t see – from my window.

Mind you, it’ll need to be warmer than this before I’m enticed into the pool. I can’t believe my bad luck with the weather.

We came through Sousse on the way here, but we are actually in a town called Sqanes, which is on the outskirts of the city of Monastir.

That’s Monastir, right down there. And although it’s quite an interesting city, the seaport isn’t up to all that much.

And it’s for that reason that if I have the chance, I’ll be heading to Sousse for a day trip. The port there is one of the largest in Tunisia with a busy railway freight line into the desert.

That should provide some good opportunities.

The production of oil is a big thing in North Africa and Tunisia has some at its disposal.

And in the days of a tight economy, exploration has expanded and underneath the sea has been targeted as a likely source – hence the oil rig that I can see from my window.

It’s quite a way out from the shore, but it’s amazing what you can do with a decent telephoto lens and a good graphics program.

Tea tonight – and every night – is a buffet. You can help yourself. And it’s rather light on the vegan options unfortunately but a plate of wild rice and vegetables cooked with garlic, and a helping of beans from the salad tray followed by a real and proper fruit salad and I will settle for that.

So now I’m going to have an early night. Only 56% on the fitbit but I’m not too bothered about that. I’m exhausted after everything today and an early night will do me good.

Tomorrow it’s the beach!

Tuesday 17th April 2018 – SO THERE I WAS …

… bright-eyed and bushy-tailed leaping out of bed as soon as the alarm clock rang, ready to fight the good fight for yet another day.

And then I awoke from the exciting dream that I was having – something to do with a cake of some description and my mother (although I shudder to think what it might have been) – and it took me a good ten minutes and three alarm calls to shake off the feeling of impending doom that I was having.

And i’m not sure why that was either.

We had the usual morning ritual which involved a good 20-minute search for the apple-and-rhubarb purée that I knew that I had (and which came to light about 20 minutes after I had finished breakfast) and then a little pause while I tidied myself up and gathered my wits (which, considering how many wits I have these days, takes much longer than it ought to).

Having finally organised myself, I set out for the shops. First stop was Kruidvat and the gelatine-free sweet counter. i’m heading off tomorrow and I shan’t encounter another Kruidvat after this.

Next stop was Delhaize for the baguetteand the stuff for breakfast and lunch tomorrow. With my early start I won’t have time to track down any fresh bread so I need to organise myself now.

And just for a change, there was no-body doing anything unusual in the supermarket. That incident with the punnet of strawberries has affected me just as much as the other incident in LeClerc did the other day, the one where the woman insisted that they weighed her fruit and veg before they bagged it.

The walk back here was quite uneventful, but I did stop at a café for a morning coffee and a little relax by the sea. And I fell in with one of the workmen digging these holes on the promenade and it seems that my guess is correct. They are indeed digging out for a new underground car park.

As I have always said – if you want to know the answer you have to ask the question.

While I was working on the laptop I found myself going off with the fairies which I found quite surprising. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t had a good sleep during the night, was it?

But it didn’t last long and I soon recovered enough to make my butties and head out to the street.

And boarded the ferry down the road just in time to see one of the barges at the cement works flushing out its pipes into the open harbour.

At least, that’s what I assume that it was doing. It certainly wasn’t smoke that was coming out of that pipe over there.

In case you are wondering, which I’m sure you are, there’s not only the offshore works going on for the extension to the wind farm but there’s a huge construction project on dry land just here where the old loading bay for the former RMT ferries from Oostende to Dover is being converted into the new city bus station.

Now, how about this?

I’ve seen people carry dogs around in their arms, in a push-chair (yes, I have), in a bicycle trailer, but this beats just about everything, doesn’t it? Taking your mutt “for a walk” in a box attached to the frame of an old bagging truck.

I just don’t see the point of any of this. I thought that the whole idea of having a dog was so that it would fit in with your lifestyle. So why have a dog that needs to be dragged around like this?

I’m a cat person, not a dog person as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but even I reckon that if you are going to have a dog, you have a DOG, not something that looks like a drowned rat that can’t run about and have fun.

The wind had changed round today so my little sunny nook from yesterday was ruled out. But farther along the beach I found another sheltered spot to eat my butties. And I had a good hour in the sun with my book. It really was starting to become a very pleasant afternoon.

As I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … Oostende is a ship-spotter’s paradise.

There were tons of shipping out there in the English Channel again today as always but unfortunately far too far out to sea to properly identify. I wish we could persuade them to come in closer to the coast line the 18th Century wreckers did.

That would provide a bit of excitement for the holidaymakers around here, wouldn’t it?

One of the reasons why they can’t come in closer is because there are some sandbanks out there.

And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, they are building a wind farm out there and we saw in the harbour the other day the masts of some of the turbines.

A few of the turbines have already been erected and although they are quite a good distance out to sea, the telephoto lens will pick them up and with a little bit of “crop and enlarge” and other kinds of enhancement we can at least manage to see them in principle.

It was quite a pleasant walk all the way down to the café where I had stopped yesterday.

And yesterday there were just two or three of us. Today, with the beautiful weather, they were queueing out of the door to be served and it wasn’t all that easy to find a good place to sit.

All in all I was there for a good 45 minutes drinking coffee and reading my book in the sunshine and (as I noticed later this evening) I am even sunburnt a little (no, it ISN’T rust). I certainly wasn’t expecting this.

The promenade ends here but I carried on a little way through the dunes because from up here if the weather is good there is an excellent view.

On a good day you can see all the way down the coast as far as Zeebrugge, and probably beyond as well.

We were certainly having that kind of weather today and the view was really excellent. And that doesn’t include the view that I had of the rather solitary gentleman whom I surprised in my assault on the hilltop.

He certainly wasn’t expecting to be disturbed, lurking as he was amongst the dunes.

But that’s not all that there is to see up here either.

We’ve talked … "at great length" – ed … about the fortifications of the Atlantic Wall that the Germans had built to protect the north-west European coast from invasion and I even live just a couple of hundred metres from some of the fortifications.

But this part of the coast was certainly the most crucial from the point of view of the Germans. Probably the shortest crossing, the easiest access to the interior and several major ports in the immediate vicinity, most of the effort of the Germans was concentrated in the strip between Boulogne and Antwerp.

Even out here, you can stumble unexpectedly upon parts of the fortifications hidden in the dunes.

My walk back to the harbour was relatively slow under the burning sun and there was nothing whatever of any excitement to break up the journey.

Nothing, that is, except a working party tidying up the bows of HMS Vindictive.

It’s 100 years ago this year since her rather futile attempt to block the harbour mouth here to prevent German submarines heading out into the English Channel and beyond and they are planning on having some kind of celebration. So I suppose they want her to look her best.

The ferry was in when I arrived so I didn’t have to wait too long. And I was soon across on the other side.

By now if anything it was somewhat hotter, but the ice-cream stall came to the rescue. Non-dairy sorbets are much more widespread than they were and the banana sorbet here is delicious. I adjourned to a bench on the promenade overlooking the sea with my ice-cream sorbet and my book and soaked up some more sun.

In the distance a huge container ship was heading our way and so I waited patiently for it to arrive. But before it reached me it had a touch of the old right-hand down a little and headed off out further away from shore.

As a result I can’t tell you very much about it, and even the view isn’t all that clear. No matter how good your photo equipment might (or might not) be, it can only do so much.

By 18:00 the temperature was cooling down so I headed off back to my hotel room. And at the entrance to the hotel I encountered yet another specimen of the whining, moaning Brit wbo didn’t like this, didn’t like that, didn’t like something else.

So I reminded him of how much he was paying to stay here, but that had no effect whatsoever.

That really is the one thing that totally annoys me. It’s all very well not having certain facilities if you aren’t actually paying for them. I’m paying €110 for three nights accommodation here (without breakfast, without wifi in the room and so on, of course) but the place is clean and tidy, the staff is helpful, the rooms are comfortable, it’s a quiet hotel and it’s 100 metres from the beach.

Where else are you going to get that here in Oostende?

I have to admit that there really are times when I am ashamed to admit that I’m British when I encounter people like him in mainland Europe.

With all of the effort that I had been through during the day I was feeling a little weary and so I lay down on the bed for a quick 10 minutes.

But 10 minutes. 19:55 when I awoke. More like 110 minutes I reckon. But I’m not complaining. I have a very early start in the morning so I need my sleep.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last year I discovered a Syrian restaurant run by a couple of refugees. That was my destination for tonight.

And I do have to say that it really was an excellent choice because the meal was just as good as the one that I had had last time.The falafel was cooked to perfection and there were enough chips to feed a small army.

A choice of sauces too, so I chose garlic sauce. And if I could make mine emulsify like theirs I would be an extremely happy bunny.

Back here I packed away the stuff that I don’t need now and then went for an early night. I started to watch a film on the laptop but after about 20 minutes Iswitched it off and settled down to go to sleep.

Like I said – an early start in the morning.

Monday 16th April 2018 – I’M PAYING …

… €110 (well, €118 with taxes) for three nights in this hotel and I do have to say that I’ve not had such a good deal as this in most other places where I’ve stayed.

No breakfast of course at that price but I’ve brought my own, left over from the place in Leuven so that’s no big deal. But the bed was so comfortable for a cheap bed that I was out like a light and stayed out for quite a good while.

That didn’t stop me going on a midnight ramble though. I was in some kind of tower last night – a tower that was some kind of tourist attraction. Right at the top of it I was. But for some reason there was nothing that interested me and I was more interested in seeing how quickly I could descend to the ground. Old women, schoolgirls, families – nothing slowed me down and I was bowling them over like ninepins in my race to the bottom. Outside, I was just leaning on a fence in some kind of depression when I was tapped on the shoulder. Two people – a young man and his girlfriend – from his party were there and they were desperately trying to cheer me up – telling me about all of the machinery that was still in this mill and how there were a couple of big old engines in the cellar that were used to manufacture electricity. But nothing seemed to haul me out of my depression.

Nothing seemed to haul me out of my stinking pit either. After all of the exertions of yesterday I was aching in places that I didn’t even realise that I had, and I thought that my fitbit was really taking the mickey when it told me that “your activity yesterday will really benefit your health”.

After our usual morning performance I had breakfast and then, shame as it is to admit it, I closed my eyes and was away with the fairies for at least half an hour. I definitely did too much yesterday.

But you can’t keep a good man down for long – nor me neither for that matter – and I was out on the streets again.

Off on a walk down to the Delhaize supermarket for some shopping and a baguette for lunch. I have to eat;

And this is the kind of thing that would bring tears to the eyes of many single women. I’m not quite sure of the purpose of this display but it was certainly interesting from an aesthetic point of view.

And we had yet another delightful scene in here too – of a woman weighing the punnets of strawberries (clearly labelled 500 grammes) to find out which one had the most in it. I thoroughly despair of the human nature that is within some people.

Back here I had a few things to do and then I made my butties for lunch and hit the streets yet again.

But not very far – just outside the hotel where the people who run the bar opposite were unloading stuff from their van.

And you only need to look at the corrugated bonnet to tell you that this is one of the earliest generations of 2CV vans. And that makes it something of a rare beast. you don’t see too many of the cars of this generation about these days (although regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we do know someone who has one) never mind the vans.

In fact, thinking about it, with the Healey 3000 on Saturday, the Ponton last night and now the 2CV, I’ve seen more interesting vehicles this last three days than I have over the last three months.

Having dealt with the 2CV, my route took me along the promenade again in the general direction of the railway station.

And past some very interesting works going on down on the beach with them building a sort-of lego wall there on the right to stop the sand drifting over the new causeway that they had built a couple of years ago.

And there was some piling work going on at the end of the older, previous causeway that was the harbour mouth. So it looks as if the work on the modernisation of the harbour is going to be going on and on.

It’s always a bad idea for me to see a ferry. I get in such a bad mood because, of course, every time I see a ferry it makes me cross.

And of course there is a free ferry from near the aquarium that goes across the harbour to the commercial side of the docks where there are many of the fortifications still remaining from World War II, and also from World War I when Oostende was an important German submarine base.

There was only a short wait until the ferry put in its appearance too.

We saw these towers yesterday and I had been wondering what they were.

And so seeing as I was in the company of Master Bates, Seaman Staines and Roger the Cabin Boy aboard the Good Ship Ven .. err … Roger Raveel, I enquired of one of them what was going on.

It seems that they are the masts of more wind turbines for the offshore wind farm, whose headquarters you may remember we visited last time we were here. And the ships that are dodging in and out of the harbour are supply ships for the construction of the extension to the wind farm.

Being decanted onto the other side of the harbour, I threaded my way through the network of canals and locks that form the entrances to the various little avant-ports and found myself in the shipyard.

The shipyard was built in 1931 apparently but not much ship repairing goes on there these days. It’s pretty derelict.

The increase in size of ships and the decline of the fishing industry, as well as new high standards for pleasure boat construction, have put paid to hundreds of little yards like this.

But despite the air of dereliction, the yard wasn’t empty.

There was still this old fishing boat here, up on chocks and fenced off from the public. It’s looking very much the worse for wear these days and like the yacht from Delaware that we saw yesterday, this one won’t be going anywhere any time soon either.

As a fishing boat, you might say that it’s had its chips.

In our quest for yet another Ship of the Day today I wandered around the headland to see what I would see.

But the first thing that I saw was the barge with the piling machine scuttling off presumably for its lunch break.

Subsequent enquiries revealed that they are still working on the harbour with the intention of providing a safe haven for ships of up to 150 metres in length (which will be quite impressive from my point of view) and the work will continue for quite a while.

Not only that, according to the architect’s drawings, there seems to be the intention to put some kind of amenity building over there at the head of the old harbour entrance.

That would be a pleasant addition to the amenities offered to tourists by the town.

There was a ship sailing … "dieseling" – ed … about in the distance.

Of course I can’t be sure about it but judging by the gear that it had on board it looked as if it might be one of the supply ships for the new wind farm that they are building.

And so with the aid of the zoom telephoto lens I was able to have a good shot of it so that I could inspect it at my leisure.

But I was interrupted by a French couple who enquired about the piece of the bow of HMS Vindictive (which, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is stuck on a plinth just here, and which, because of the distraction, I forgot to photograph).

Of course it’s the kind of thing that I’ve talked about before … "at great length" – ed … so I was able to tell them everything about it. They may not be any the wiser, but they are certainly better-informed.

There was a biting wind out here and it was quite cold too, but I went down onto the beach and found a corner of the beach that was well-sheltered and in a sun-bowl.

And there I sat on the sand and ate my butties.

And read my book

And … errr … had a little relax in the sun.

And why not? It was the first time this year that I had felt really comfortable outside in the nice weather.

There is quite a bit of work going on along the beach here right now.

It seems that the sand has drifted quite considerably during the winter, probably with all of the storms that we have had (and if they had the one like we had at the beginning of January that would certainly be the case), and has buried the protective fences.

There are teams of diggers digging out the sand and passing it over to bulldozers which are spreading it out on other parts of the beach.

And judging by the amount of sand that needs shifting, they are going to be here for quite some considerable time.

A good way along the promenade in the direction of Zeebrugge is a little cafe and this was my destination today.

I’d had a really good walk so far and so I reckoned that I had earned a cup of coffee and a little relaxation. And apart from anything else, there is a gentleman’s restroom here.

So yet another sit in the sun with a coffee, the book and a little repose for half an hour while I gathered my strength for the return journey. It’s a long way back to civilisation from here.

I took a slightly different route on my way back.

After a mile or so I clambered up over the dunes behind the promenade and was rewarded by yet another candidate for “Ship of the Day”.

Never mind the smaller boat in the foreground – it’s hard to tell at this kind of distance whether the ship in the background on the horizon is a container ship or a cruise liner.

But nevertheless it is certainly an impressive sight and I’m glad that I bought the zoom telephoto lens for the new little camera.

Now this is what I had been clambering over the dunes to see.

We’ve mentioned the World War II fortifications and also the World War I ditto, but there are fortifications from an earlier date here too and the fact that they are built of brick rather than concrete will tell you that they date from before the mid-19th Century.

In fact, this is the Fort Napoleon, built by the aforementioned as part of his defences to keep out the Perfide Albion from invading the Continent.

It had also been a German command post in both World Wars so for some time it’s been on my list of places to visit

Every time that I’ve been to Oostende something has always cropped up to put a stop to any plan that I have had to come here, but not today. And so, in accordance with the usual procedure, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s closed right now to visitors.

Being obliged to scramble over fences and building roofs is not something that has caused me any great difficulty in the past, but it’s not the kind of thing that you do in Belgium. Belgian police have no sense of humour and are notoriously unpredictable in their reactions.

We have had some … errr … interesting encounters in the past, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Oostende was a German submarine base in World War I. A total of 19 were stationed here, of which 15 were lost.

I’ve never been able to find out which was the actual basin that they used, but there is a suggestion that it was apparently behind some kind of harbour gae. If so, this basin could be a very likely candidate.

I don’t think that the sunken boat over there in the corner is one of their victims however.

As an aside, it was announced over the winter that an completely intact and sealed World War I submarine, with just its bows blown off as it it had struck a mine, has been discovered just offshore.

This was also in the same basin.

And although she hasn’t sunk, she may as well because she has all the air of being a derelict.

She’s called Scorpios, having at one time been knows as Loodsboot 4 and is described as a “yacht”, although there are a couple of other “Loodsboots” with different suffixes that are described as “pilot tenders”.

Scorpios was actually built here in Oostende, in the Beliard Oostende Scheepwerk, but a long time ago. 1950 to be exact. She has a displacement of 499 tonnes and is registered in Antwerp.

As for her builders, the company was founded in Antwerp in 1877 but set up here in Oostende in 1923. The company’s main output was fishing boats.

The name of the company changed on many occasions as the smaller shipyards combined in order to remain viable, but the decline of the fishing industry saw the company finally slide into bankruptcy in 1994.

Their yard remained derelict for many years but was finally swept away in the modernisation of the port of Oostende in 2008

Heading back to the ferry I was lucky enough to be standing on top of one of the lock gates when the siren went off to tell me that the gate was about to open. I had to get a move on to avoid falling into the lock.

It’s that time of the day of course when the tide is coming in, up to the level of the water in the smaller docks and harbours and so they are opening the gates to allow traffic to proceed in and out.

And as luck would have it, right at this moment there were two fishing boats, O190 and O191, preparing to leave the harbour.

They were queued up at the inner gate (being a tidal harbour there is a double-set of lock gates here, one opening inwards and the other opening outwards).

Fishing is not something that is as common today as it was 50 years ago. In those days there would have been whole fleets of smaller coastal fishing boats in ports like Oostende but with the amount of over-fishing that took place, the fishing fleets have declined as quickly as the amount of fish that they used to catch.

Nowadays it’s mainly huge deep-sea trawlers that work on a more industrial basis out of the bigger ports.

Back on the western side of the harbour my walk along the promenade took me past yet more redevelopment.

When I first started coming to Oostende 40-odd years ago the whole sea-front area was nothing but nice belle-epoque villas from the lats 19th Century and small, cheap down-market hotels.

But today there’s almost nothing from that period remaining. It’s all been bulldozed away and replaced by modern holiday flats that cost an arm and a leg to buy or to rent. It’s just not the same as it used to be and I personally think that much of the character of the town has gone.

Nevertheless, it’s still one of the places that I enjoy the most for a little break for a couple of days and I’ll keep on coming here for as long as I can find some reasonably-priced accommodation close to the sea front.

It has some nice beaches, good walks, good, cheap rail connections to just about everywhere and not the least of the reasons being that it’s situated on one of the busiest shipping lanes in the World.

Out there on the horizon miles away but we can see quite well thanks to the telephoto lens is a ship that, i reckon, is almost certainly a container ship.

And although it’s difficult to tell at this distance, it seems to be “outbound” to the North Atlantic. That looks to me like the blunt end to the right of the photograph.

And in any case, traffic is regulated in the English Channel because of the volume of traffic, and westbound traffic is routed on the southern side. “Drive on the left”

Back at the hotel I had a little … errr … relax for half an hour or so and then later went out in search of food for tea.

The Syrian restaurant that I like and which does excellent falafelschotels was open, but so was the good Italian restaurant next door. But that was displaying a “closed on Tuesday” notice on the door so it looks like falafel tomorrow then and Italian meal tonight.

The penne al arrabiata here, zonder kaas of course, is wicked and it does have to be said that had there been a fridge in my hotel room I would have put the toilet paper in it ready for tomorrow. But I enjoyed every mouthful of it and I’ll be back here again next time I come to stay in Oostende.

On the way back to the hotel i was swept up in a party of kids streaming out of the Youth Hostel on their way to the beach for some late-evening amusement but I came back here to wash my clothes, to have a shower and take an early night. No internet up here in the rooms so instead I watched a film on the laptop.

And I made it down to the end too, for the first time in quite a while.

So now to settle down for a good night. The next night won’t be anything like as comfortable as this one. The alarm will be going off at 05:30 for a start and that’s enough to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm.

At least I can sleep on the train on Wednesday morning though.

Sunday 15th April 2018 – I’M MOVING ON …

…this morning so I can’t afford to hang about. I have a lot to do.

Not like during the night anyway. For some reason or other I had a desire to learn English – more really for the precise terms of grammar than anything else. And so I enrolled on this course that was taking place in Flint in North Wales. So I entered the class where the teacher greeted me in fluent Welsh. Whatever the standard of my Welsh might be, it wasn’t good enough to understand anything at the speed that she was speaking and this took me completely unawares. I stepped back for a minute to wonder how I was going to cope with this. In the class was a girl from Finland – tallish and well-built with shoulder-length blonde hair in a pony tail, and we ended up in a bar having a drink and a chat about our experiences in this class.

I leapt out of bed with alacrity (and I bet that you thought that I was on my own, didn’t you?) and while I was waiting for my medicine to work I caught up with a few bits and pieces that needed doing and that I should have done yesterday had I not been so exhausted after our trip out.

After breakfast I started to hunt things down and do my packing but for some reason or other it took far longer than I expected and I ended up stuffing things at random into my suitcase – and then unstuffing them as I searched for things that I needed and that I couldn’t remember having stuffed into the aforesaid. I’m clearly in a bad way.

And my suitcase seems to weigh about 10 times more than it did coming here. I haven’t bought that much extra stuff – I know that – and a lot of the stuff that I brought, like the food for example, has been vastly diminished in quantity. And the towels in the hotel weren’t all that fluffy.

Dashing out, I handed back the key to the room and was delayed for a few minutes by the local cat who finally allowed me to pick him up and stroke him. Stroking a cat is of course very good for the stress, but not if you are in a hurry to catch a train.

At the station I had to queue for hours behind people who clearly had nothing better to do on a Sunday morning (I’ve no idea why my new bank card won’t work in the self-service ticket machines of the SNCB).

I was only just in time for my train. Had it not been running 5 minutes late I would have been in difficulty.

It was one of the first generation of the “luxury” second-class trains – the first of those from the late 1980s with comfortable individual cloth seats. And so it was a little on the tatty side with frayed edges and so on but nevertheless, very comfortable.

I settled myself in for the long haul up to Oostende. I’m treating myself to a couple of days by the seaside before I come home.

We pulled into the station at Brugge and after a while I noticed that we hadn’t pulled out again. I didn’t think much of it until I was tapped on the shoulder by the ticket collector.

It seems that there’s a problem on the line higher up and the train won’t be going any further. A bus had been provided for us.

Eventually tracking down where I was supposed to go, I joined the heaving throng crammed like sardines into an old De Lijn service bus that whisked us up the motorway at 49mph. And was I happy when the doors opened and we could all alight?

The beautiful summer’s day that we had had in Leuven had now descended into a grey overcast sky but it will take much more than this to dampen my ardour. I set off to find my hotel, stopping on the way to pick up a baguette and being given the change from a €20 note in €2 pieces because they had nothing else to hand.

As for the hotel, I had a very good price from the Hotel Neutralia – a hotel that I don’t actually know. It’s wrong to say that it’s spartan – probably “basic” is a much better word to describe it – but I’ve stayed in many worse hotels than this and paid much more money for the privilege.

The staff are very friendly and hospitable, but the downside is that the internet doesn’t reach into the bedrooms on the upper floors (like mine). You have to come down to the foyer or the bar.

With the baguette that I had bought and a few other bits and pieces that I had, I made some butties and then headed out to the beach.

Just in time to encounter a Ship of the Day – and it’s been a long time since we’ve had one of those, hasn’t it? So I scrambled across the beach onto the sea wall over there for a closer look.

She came into the harbour, did a quick lap around and promptly sailed … "dieseled" – ed … back out again.

She’s the Artevelde out of Antwerp, and is described as an offshore, tug, supply or dredging vessel, which would suggest to me that she has some connection with the offshore wind farm that we know is out there somewhere.

Despite flying the Belgian flag and being based in Antwerp she’s owned by a company called Dredging International Luxembourg.

That reminds me that last time we were here we saw in the harbour quite a few other Luxembourg ships that looked as if they had connections with the wind farm.

Built as recently as 2009, she has a gross tonnage of 5005 and so is rather big as far as a coastal vessel goes.

I walked on down to the railway station to check on the time of my train back to Brussels, passing by the fishmarket on the way.

I’m not sure now if I’ve ever taken a photo of it in the past, but here’s one to be going on with. I’ve probably mentioned that each stall is occupied by an individual trawler skipper, and the goods displayed on the slab came out of his trawler’s hold earlier in the morning.

You don’t get much fresher than that without having to go out to sea to catch it for yourself.

Outside the fish market is a pile of temporary stalls that specialise in certain seafoods.

As well as the warme wullocks that we saw on a previous occasion you can have your mosselen in case you want to make your own mosselen en fritjes, and if you aren’t careful you can get crabs too.

One of the stallholders offered me oysters. “They are a well-known aphrodisiac” he assured me.

But regular readers of this rubbish will know that that is nonsense. I had a dozen the last time that I was in the UK with Percy Penguin (who doesn’t feature in these pages half as much as she deserves) but only 9 of them worked.

I’ve never noticed this war memorial before and I can’t believe that I’ve missed it in all the times that I’ve been coming to Oostende since the early 1970s.

It’s been erected to commemorate 25 sailors of the 29th Motor Torpedo Boat Flotilla who lost their lives when an accidental fire ignited explosives aboard one of the boats and blew a total of five boats into oblivion.

Either it’s fairly new or else I’ve been walking around Oostende in a daze.

It’s not possible to miss this though, is it?

This is the Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk – the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul – in Oostende, designed by the architect Louis Delacenserie and said to be based on the cathedral at Cologne.

Despite its ancient, Gothic looks, construction of the church began in 1896 to replace an earlier one on the site that had burnt down. It was consecrated on 31st August 1908

And it wasn’t missed in either of the World Wars, suffering some damage in both. As a result, the magnificent stained glass windows in there are much more modern than the rest of the church.

And one day I’ll be walking past here with a camera when the sun is actually shining.

So down at the station. And I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that I am not looking forward to a train that starts out at 06:41. Whatever time will I have to be out of bed to catch that? But at least there is a train. I could have ended up at somewhere much more isolated than this.

My perambulations took me around the yacht harbour and here there were many interesting things to see.

We had the Mercator of course. She’s the centre of attraction here in Oostende in the same way that Marité is back home in Granville although she doesn’t move about quite so often.

She was designed by Adrien de Gerlache, the Belgian Antarctic explorer and author, and rigged as a barquentine.

She was built in Leith, Scotland in 1932 as a training ship for the Belgian Merchant Navy and made many successful and well-known voyages, but was impressed into the British Royal Navy in World War II as a depot ship for submarines.

It took four years for her to return to service after her demobilisation and she needed an extensive overhaul before she was considered fit enough to resume her training duties.

From 1960 she was moored “off-duty” first at Antwerp and later here in Oostende as a part-time museum. She was laid up permanently in 2013.

But never mind the Mercator for the moment. This yacht caught my eye too.

And not for the least of the reasons being that she seems to be out of Dover – not the Dover just across the English Channel but the “Dover DL” which seems to indicate the Dover that is in Delaware, across the Atlantic from here.

So what she is doing here I really have no idea. But judging by the moss and the general debris scattered about on her, she’s been here for quite a while and won’t be sailing back home any time soon.

Back on the promenade and they seem to be digging it up everywhere. and how!

With it being a Sunday there’s no-one around to ask what is going on but part of the promenade had an underground car-park, so maybe they are planning to extend that. Parking here in Oostende is very tight in the summer and with all of the alterations that seem to be going on here, there will be fewer and fewer spaces. And so a few more certainly won’t go amiss.

But then, of course, parking is expensive here. And I paid just €21:00 to come here on the train. so I’m not sure why people coming to the seaside to lounge on the beach need to come by car anyway.

Back at my hotel I had a … errr … little rest for an hour or so and then went back out onto the streets – well, the Zeedyke actually – and headed west along the promenade, grabbing a bag of fritjes from the fritkot on the corner here.

Quite a walk too – much further than I was expecting in fact. but I did go past a couple of vehicles belonging to one of my former employers. The happy (and not-so-happy) times that I had there between 1979 and 1992 with the taxi business in between and around of course.

But how times have changed. When I started there in 1979 we had Ford R1114 lightweight coaches with Plaxton Supreme bodywork. But just look today at the kind of vehicle that is being used on coach tours. Mercedes engined three-axle heavyweights.

I don’t know how people today would have managed with some of the trips that we had to do back in 1979 in the equipment that we had.

Eventually I arrived at my destination – the Versluys Arena, home of the Koninklijke VoetballKlub Oostende.

Having missed my football last night, I wasn’t going to miss another and this evening KV Oostende were at home against STVV – the Kononklijke Sint Truidense Voetballvereniging.

I don’t recall having seen either of these teams before and I’ve certainly never been to the Versluys Arena so that sounded like a good plan.

I was crammed into the “away” end with the St Truiden supporters one of whom was dressed as a Canary. It’s the nickname of the club aparently, due no doubt to the yellow and blue colours that the team wears.

The match itself was very interesting. STVV had much more of the possession in the first half but they didn’t have the technique that Oostende had. KV Oostende were certainly the better team.

The trouble with modern football is that the aim seems to be “possession” – the longer they can hang on to the ball the better. And just like every other match that I have seen, the quick ball out wide to the wingers just doesn’t seem to be an option. They seem much more willing to pass the ball back to the goalkeeper.

At half-time though, KV Oostende were 2-0 up. And just to prove my point, both goals were scored by passes “over the top” of the defenders to players running into space.

During half-time the heavens opened and we were treated to the torrential downpour to end all torrential downpours. And the second half was played in conditions into which you wouldn’t have sent out a dog.

To everyone’s surprise (the STVV supporters and probably the players too) STVV pulled a goal back. A shot from about 20 yards out took a wicked deflection off a defender and ended up in the far corner of the net with the keeper helpless to do anything about that one.

And then, with 5 minutes to go, STVV scored a most unlikely equaliser with some good passing play where a ball broke kindly foran unmarked attacker.

And in the remaining time, STVV had two excellent chances to score a winner but their attackers were unable to make any contact with the ball.

By now the rain had eased off a little and I set off on my wet and weary walk home along the promenade.

I didn’t get very far though before my attention was grabbed by this gorgeous machine.

It’s a Mercedes 220 Ponton – the Ponton being the first modern post-war body styling from Mercedes and which ran from about 1953 to the early 1960s before being replaced by the W series models (somewhere down on the farm growing in a hedgerow I have a Mercedes W123 240D).

Not exactly my favourite Mercedes – I adore the pre-war and early postwar models of course but I would settle any day of the week for one of these and I’d be glad to take this home with me in my suitcase.

My long and tiring walk home brought me past the Royal Villa of King Leopold II. He was probably the most famous King of the Belgians (the King isn’t “The King of Belgium” but “The King of the Belgians”) and under whose rule there was an opulence that has never been matched either before or since.

And he had his Royal Villa, or Summer Palace, behind that wall on the Promenade at Oostende.

I slunk into my hotel and gave myself a really good shake so as not to traipse the rain with me into the hotel. I had intended to watch a film before going to sleep but with my fitbit telling me that I had done 227% of my day’s activity and walked a total of … errr … 17.7 kms today, I decided that an early night would be a better idea.

Thursday 5th April 2018 – THAT WAS A …

… better day today. I felt much more like it and managed to accomplish a lot of the things that I should have done yesterday.

And for a change we had a different kind of night. Flat out almost as soon as my head touched the pillow, and then wide awake at 04:10. It’s either one thing or the other right now, and it’s certainly not the other, I can tell you that.

But I did go back to sleep again at some point for it was a struggle to resurface when the alarm went off. And then we had the usual morning ritual followed by a shower and a change of clothes. After all, it is Thursday.

Before I left for the shops I attacked the backlog of work, and I’ve now booked my rail ticket to Leuven and my accommodation there. But not a return ticket though. Idly surfing the internet like you do … "like YOU do, you mean" – ed … I found a three-day mini-break in Oostende (I like Oostende as you know) for just €110 plus local taxes. I need a break, and so that will do nicely, thank you.

On the way to the shops I called at the Bank. My rent here is being increased by the cost of living index – all of €3:74 per month, so I need to amend the standing order. And at the station to pick up my rail ticket, I had to help an old man (like I’m really young, of course) wrestle with the ticket machine. It’s not easy if you don’t know what you are doing.

Nothing of much excitement at LIDL although I did forget the Agave Syrup. I even had my hand on it at one point but was distracted and that was that.

On the way back I had to call at the Estate Agent. With the rent being increased, there is €0:34 to pay for the period at the end of April. But they didn’t have a till or a cash box and I didn’t have the correct money, so I’ll have to go there another time with the right amount.

Once I’d had my coffee, I set to work.

10 kiwis, one banana; half a cup of desiccated coconut, one carton of coconut cream and a couple of tablespoons of honey (in the absence of Agave Syrup) all chucked into the whizzer and it created half a litre of kiwi mixture.

It’s now busy freezing in the freezer and tomorrow I’ll pass it through the sorbet maker to aerate it. And then it should be done. But I hope that the honey works. Agave Syrup is used for this as it keeps the molecules separate and doesn’t freeze the food in a big solid block.

But then, that’s what the aerator does.

After lunch I went for my afternoon walk, as it really was a beautiful afternoon.

And technology seems to be catching up with me right now. Parked on the car park of the college this afternoon was a car powered by hydrogen – a mere 20 years after my Open University thesis on the use of hydrogen for motor fuel.

But we saw that when I lived on the farm – what I was doing back in the 90s becoming mainstream 10 or 15 years later.

It’s not the only thing that is catching up either.

We saw the works for the fibre-optic cable and saw them building the new compound for the next phase. And here they are, now attacking the rue du Port as predicted.

Queues a mile long, seeing as it was school chucking-out time, but not that that’s ever going to bother them, is it?

I mentioned that there are four buildings here that formed part of the barracks. One is now the College, the second is the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs and contains the public rooms, and the other two are being converted into apartments (I live in one of them).

The last one is already part-occupied, and I see that they have now started on work on the final section of it.

I tried to buy an apartment in there, but no-one ever returned my phone calls. And people complain about a recession, don’t they?

But being of a small mind, I had to laugh at the name of the company that is currently working in there.

Mind you, anyone who knows anything about the “Carry On” films, and in particular Carry on Don’t Lose Your Head will understand exactly what is humorous about the name.

But I digress. I came back in for a coffee.

I’m not sure what happened to the afternoon after that. Next thing that I knew, it was 18:45. I must have been stark out for a good 90 minutes or so. This is really getting to me, isn’t it, this ill-health? I shall have to pull myself together somehow.

But I still managed to find the energy to make my aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit. And the helping that I had tonight (there are four others for the freezer) was delicious. I really enjoyed that.

It was a beautiful evening when I went for my walk, and I bumped into an old lady out for a perambulation being followed around by a dog and several cats, one of which is my long-haired black cat.

It turns out that the cat is indeed hers, and she is called Minette (the cat, not the woman). We had quite a lengthy chat but Minette kept her distance. I suppose that the smell of Gribouille, who once more let me pick him up for a stroke, had made her rather jealous.

But it was weird to see this little procession down and around the streets of the Medieval town

So I’ll have a drink and a little relax and then I’ll go to bed. I have my carrot soup to make tomorrow, I reckon.

Saturday 9th December 2017 – YOU MISSED …

… even more excitement this evening.

Walking past the roundabout at the top of the hill this evening and I heard a crash. A scooter went one way, its rider went another and his artificial leg (for he was a unijambiste) did a Tony B Liar and went a third way.

It seemed that some woman had failed to stop at the entry to the roundabout and consequently despatched the aforementioned into the bushes.

I helped him to his feet, someone else screwed his leg back on and we all got him and his bike to the side of the road. He was more shaken than stirred but once I was assured that he was OK, I left him to get on with things and I went on for the football.

I’d had a reasonable night’s sleep for a change ad I’d been on my travels too.

We started off in some kind of theatre where there was some entertainment going on, provided by a group of kids. However the star of the show, a little blonde-haired girl, was missing and this started a frantic hunt. This led us into a kind of pre-school nursery school, the type that was intended for the sons of noblemen rather than the likes of us, and if ever I commercialise the little game that the kids were playing that helped them learn the names of the Greek philosophers, I shall clean up.

After breakfast I had to wait for my medication to work and it took so long this morning that I forewent my shower. I’d miss the bread in LIDL if I hang around too long.

And this would have been the cheapest shop yet had it not been for one or two special purchases. I’m going away on Wednesday morning as you know so I don’t need much. Just a couple of things in LIDL and a couple more in LeClerc.

NOZ had a couple of little bits and pieces but nowhere had a container to keep my Christmas cake. Not a large cake tin, and not a large plastic container either. I forget how many shops I went into (and some of them twice too) without success. In the end, I bought a plastic storage bin and sealed the cake in with clingfilm. I’m hoping that Leuven might come up with something suitable next week.

But I did find a new suitcase. You may recall that in Oostende a while ago my small wheeled suitcase gave up the ghost and I replaced it with a temporary one. That was a cheap and nasty thing, and not suitable for long-term use, so I’ve bought a small solid wheeled one for my trips to Leuven.

I’d planned to stop off on the way back to phptograph the storm breaking on the sea wall at high tide in the daylight, and so as you might expect, the wind has dropped today and everything has calmed down.

After lunch I crashed out for an hour or so, and then walked off up town to the football, stopping for the scooter incident on the way.

US Granville were playing St Pryve St Hilaire FC this evening, in front of a small crowd of just 515 people.

Although Granville were a little more focused this week, they still didn’t look all that impressive. They had more of the play but St Pryve St Hilaire FC looked more dangerous on the break. In fact, the Granville centre-forward ploughed a very lonely furrow up front without very much help from his colleagues.

St Pryve St Hilaire FC scored from a breakaway, shrugging off a couple of lightweight, ineffective challenges, and the equaliser from Granville was a ball over the top of the defence with a midfielder running on.

Mind you, we could have had several more goals but both goalkeepers were in inspired form this evening making several excellent saves, including the Grancille keeper making a marvellous double-save at point-blank range.

As the rain started to fall, in the last 15 minutes; Granville came to life again just like last match, but couldn’t find the killer thrust to win the game.

On the way back, I called in at the railway station to pick up my tickets for Wednesday, and then went for a wander to take the photos of the Christmas lights in the town. And I would have been out much longer had the weather been kinder.

Tea was potatoes, beans and vegan sausages done in the microwave, Delcious it was too. Now I’m going to have an early night and a nice lie-in tomorrow.

Monday 3rd April 2017 – AND I SHAN’T …

… sleep tonight either.

Last night was yet another miserable night, and I simply don’t understand it. It’s a comfortable bed, it’s reasonably quiet here for a city centre, there’s double-glazing and all of that, but I can’t understand why I just can’t go to sleep. I’m doing something wrong, that’s for sure, and I wish that I knew just what it was.

But anyway, I had a rather … errr … late breakfast (I’d heard the alarms but I didn’t actually arise) and then cracked on with some work – searching through a pile of adverts to extract some names of estate agents and the like who might have properties to let.

And there was only one, and that wasn’t much use, except that I did learn something. And this means that I am going to have to be a little economical with the truth and come up with one or two alternative facts about my position here in Granville. Still, if it’s good enough for British and American senior civil servants, it will be good enough for me.

I walked up the hill to the last of the estate agents, but they couldn’t help with anything. But she did suggest a caravan at a holiday camp until the season dies down. And I’ve been thinking about this, and even know where I can find a caravan too. If all else fails, that’s a fall-back.

Across the road is the railway station, and seeing as they were having their Senior Citizens Railcards on special offer at €60:00, I went over and bought one. It gives me a substantial reduction on my rail fares and if I’m going to Leuven every few weeks, it will more than pay for itself. The last trip home showed that I can’t rely on my own steam to drive distances like that these days reliably.

There are regular trains to Paris Vaugirard and the journey takes just over 3 hours, and trains also to several places in the vicinity.

When Terry had taken me home last night we’d driven past a few estate agents in Donville-les-Bains and it’s only a couple of kilometres walk from the station, so seeing that it was a nice day, I went for a walk.

One was closed and the second had nothing that its main office in Granville didn’t have, but it gave me an opportunity to look around the town. It’s a nice place and the views from upon the cliffs are stunning. I shall have to make further enquiries.

I walked all the way back to my little holiday studio and picked up my olive bread, some water, some fruit and a book, and then went off to the promenade to have lunch. It was beautiful sitting out there in the sun, but round about 14:00 I reckoned that I’d go inside my studio for a sit down for half an hour.

Next thing that I remembered was that it was 17:20. I’d been asleep for well over three hours. This isn’t any good, because I won’t ever sleep at night if I keep on going like this. But I needed some spuds so I nipped to the little Carrefour down the road.

Tea was potatoes, green beans, peas and carrots with the left-over vegan burgers from mast night, followed by carrot cake and soya cream ditto.

And chatting to Liz on the internet, she suggested that I go for another walk down to the beach near the Casino to photograph the sunset.

And with it being a really beautiful night, I decided to do just that. I hurried up and finished the washing up, and then hit the streets just as the sun was starting to set. I needed to get a move on before it was too late. The sunset won’t wai for me.

I wasn’t alone out there either. There were quite a few people loitering around on the promenade, including a group of break-dancers having some fun.

And not only that, I was engaged in conversation with a woman whose husband was also taking photos of the sunset. It transpired that they were here on holiday and come from Oostende in Belgium. As a result, our conversation continued in Flemish.

That probably took them by surprise, but then again, I need to keep it up, otherwise I’ll forget and that will be a waste of a year won’t it?

The tide was out (it had been right in at lunchtime) and so I was able to go for a perambulation on the beach. That was a nice way to end the day too. After all, it’s why I’ve come to (hopefully) live by the seaside, if ever I can find a place to live.

And as it finally went dark, I walked down to the end of the promenade at the back of the Casino to take a photograph of the dying embers of the sun as it sank down over the horizon.

I wasn’t alone here either – there were all kinds of people out here enjoying the setting sun. And quite right too because it really was beautiful. It had been a gorgeous day for most people who have somewhere to live, but I’m yet to have that luxury.

I walked back along the rue Paul Poirier to my little holiday studio, which is just down there on the corner.

All of the washing up is done and I’ve had a wash. Nothing remains now except to make up my bed and go to sleep. Not that I’ll be doing too much of that after my mega-doze this afternoon.

But we’ll have a go and see where we end up. At least I’m by the seaside and that’s where I want to be. Tomorrow is another day and it looks as if I shall be having to cast my net a little further.

But I’ll find somewhere – I’m sure that I will. It’s just a question of time.

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.

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?

Saturday 25th February 2017 – IT’S THE START …

… of the Krokusvakantie here in Belgium this week. That’s the school half-term, and while it might be known as “Carnaval” in the French-speaking areas of the country, you can see why it has its name around here in Flanders, can’t you?

On my travels and I had a walk back from Caliburn through the Kruidtuin – the Botanical Gardens here in Leuven and the flowers are well and truly blooming today, aren’t they?

If you ask me what kind of flowers they are, I would say that they were mauve ones, because I know nothing whatever abut flowers, so they might not even be crocuses at all, but whatever they are, they are quite prettu.

So what was I doing at Caliburn then? And not once today but twice too.

In fact, I’ve made a start on emptying my room out reading for (hopefully) leaving on Tuesday if all goes according to plan.

But first surprise of the day was that the crane on the corner of the Brusselsestraat and the Kruisstraat has now disappeared. Work seems to have finished on the facade of the building across the road.

And what a good job they seem to have made of it too. I imagine that they’ve re-pointed the brickwork and sealed the joints underneath the roof, and now they’ve added some tiles to the wall to weatherproof it.

All in all, it loks very impressive from here

And so after yet another bad night, I was once more alone at breakfast (which suite me fine) although my garrulous Dutch/Russian friend did stick his head around the corner to make himself a coffee – I really am not up to social conversation at 07:00.

But after a relax downstairs in my room, I set to work.

It was a case of going through everything that I have here and deciding upon its priority – am I likely to be using it between now and a week on Tuesday (and there are reasons for this particular date)? And if not, I started to load it up into a couple of IKEA bags that I had lying around. That includes most of the food for a start – no reason for most of that to be hanging around for a start. And books, and bottles of pop and the like. I remember thinking when I was in Sedan back in November that I would buy just enough stuff for the first month of my stay. Here I am, three months in, and I haven’t eaten half of it.

Once I was loaded up, I set off to Caliburn to deposit it all, and then down to the Carfefour by the football ground for the stuff for pizza night tomorrow.

A little deviation (and I’m always up for a little deviation as you know) through the Kruidtuin to see the crocuses and then back here, via the Supermarket on the corner. And there’s a thing – there were plenty of black plastic boxes of the sort that I had been liberating, but all stacked up neatly at the back of the warehouse. My response is that if they don’t want people to liberate them, they shouldn’t leave them outside by the bins.

After lunch, we had another session of loading up the IKEA bags, and then after a brief pause I went back down to Caliburn with the stuff and deposited it there.

While I had been having a relax just now, I was idly scanning the internet. And something that I saw gave me an idea – I have plenty of ideas, don’t I? Furthermore, a little research on the internet proved that it was a feasible proposition too. Thus I had a quick coffee, and hit the streets.

Here I am, at the Antwerp Berchem railway station on the south side of the city, waiting for the train to Gent and Oostende which is just a-cumen in.

But I’m not going to either of these places.

Somewhere just after St Niklaas is the small town of Lokeren. It’s a place that I’ve never ever visited before and seeing as how I’m hoping to be on my way in early course, now seemed to be the right kind of time to deal with that issue

No derailments today – we were in luck – but we had to take a different track out of the station. My luck was in, for this one took us close to the carriage sidings and I had a good view of something that had caught my eye away in the distance on several occasions.

It’s actually a very sorry example of the first-generation Continental multiple units, one of the ones that you used to see painted red and cream that used to wander over the French SNCF and presumably Belgian SNCB rail networks in the &950s

Mind you, this is just one of the driving carriages of a multiple unit set and it has long-since lost the colours that it might have carried on the SNCB. But it’s beautiful all the same and I wonder what it’s doing here.

And more to the point, why no-one has seen fit to rescue it. I’d take it home with me in a heartbeat.

No prizes for guessing why I’ve come to Lokeren, is there?

I owe myself a football match from last weekend, what with the train derailment in Leuven, this match is a Belgian Jupiler Pro League (the equivalent of a Premier League match).

I’ve never been to Lokeren, never seen either of the clubs play, and KAS Eupen was on of the teams on my list of clubs to see

The ground is only a 20-minute walk from the railway station, and that means that if I exert myself and the game finishes on time, I could catch the 22:17 to St Niklaas, change for a train to Mechelen, and then catch a train from there to Brussels and then on to Leuven.

If I missed it, there is a train at 23:11 in the other direction to Gent St Pieters and then the last train from there to Leuven, getting me back to the railway station at Leuven at about 01:00.

That sounded like a plan.

I found the Daknamstadion easily enough – it was quite straightforward, rather like the walk that we have made so often to het Lisp at Lier. And the stadium resembled that at Lier too. They must order them off the peg or something like that, I reckon.

I had a cheap seat (€18:00 for a Premier League match) behind the goal, but in a corner where I wouldn’t be hemmed in by chanting supporters.

But they were up at the far end in the standing bit, with the away supporters right next to them. That’s bizarre crowd segregation, I can say.

But … tragedy! We had the mascot, not that he was up to very much of course, but there were no cheerleaders!

All this way on the train and not a single cheerleader to be seen anywhere. how disappointing is that? I had a good mind to go and ask for my money back.

But at least it’s a Premier League match, so entertainment and excitement was sure to be guaranteed, wasn’t it?

But right from the kick-off, I could tell that this match was going to be something completely different.

Because if ever there are two more inept teams as these playing anywhere in the top flight of any football league anywhere else in the world (and I include Rockall and the Lofoten Islands in this) I just wouldn’t believe it.

These two teams were totally clueless from start to finish, and I mean every word of that. If this was a Premier League match, then God help them all

KAS eupen had a player sent off after about 20 minutes – what for, I couldn’t really see. And KSC Lokeren scored a penalty during the match – a rather strict penalty if you ask me.

But KAS Eupen scored two goals, even being 1 man down. And that’s not an idication of how good they were, it’s an indication of how totally inept KSC Lokeren were.

KAS Eupen’s two goals were a breakaway down the wing, a cross into the centre and a rather hopeful volley from about 20 yards out, and a ricochet off the referee that dropped nicely for an Eupen player to hoist over the wall into space where there was a team-mate running on
.

KAS Eupen hit the post too, and their keeper made five or six magnificent saves too.

In fact, the KAS Eupen keeper, Hendrik Van Crombrugge, was by far and away the best player on the pitch. The KSC Lokeren n°14, Mehdi Terki, had a good game, but I wouldn’t have given you twopence for the remainder.

And if you want to see the … errr … highlights of the match, they are now on-line. But it beats me how they managed to find 8 minutes of them. I’m on the far right of the screen at 04:34 – in the bright yellow coat.

Despite the late start ond the 4 minutes of injury time, I put on such a turn of speed that not only was I comortably in time for the 22:17, the earlier 22:11 for Gent St Pieters. I hopped on board – and wasn’t that a fatal mistake?

Yes, everyone would expect that with almost all trains running at one-hour intervals, then all trains would run at one-hour intervals. That is almost true, and the only exception is the express train from Oostende across to Welkenraedt (that goes through Leuven), and that runs at 90-minute intervals. And so the train that I had caught arrived in Gent 20 minutes after the previous one had left, and the next one was the one that I would have caught had I come here on the 23:11 from Lokeren. In other words, being early at Lokeren station had made me as late as it is possible to be.

So here I was in Gent, stranded yet again with well over an hour to wait for the train. At least it gave me an opportunity to go for a stroll around in the late evening.

The station really does look magnificent in the urban light, like most of these beautiful Victorian piles, except that it isn’t a Victorian pile. The railway station that was here was nothing spectacular, apparently, but when they announced that they would be holding the 1913 World’s Fair here, they designed and built a railway station building to suit the aims and the ambitions of the Fair

The interior is fairly spectacular, had it been allowed to settle in its own surroundings, but it was partitioned off into shops, full of coin machines and people sleeping all over the place. I was rather disappointed.

I sat there with the bag of fritjes that I had bought from the fritkot across the square until my train arrived.

It was almost 01:00 when I arrived at the station here, and about 01:45 when I returned here. Cold, tired and exhausted.

I went straight to bed, and straight to sleep too. It was late.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: oostende

Wednesday 20th June 2018 – THE WORLD’S WORST BANK …

Saturday 9th June 2018 – THIS IS TURNING INTO A DISASTER

Wednesday 18th April 2018 – AND AN EARLY START …

Tuesday 17th April 2018 – SO THERE I WAS …

Monday 16th April 2018 – I’M PAYING …

Sunday 15th April 2018 – I’M MOVING ON …

Thursday 5th April 2018 – THAT WAS A …

Saturday 9th December 2017 – YOU MISSED …

Monday 3rd April 2017 – AND I SHAN’T …

Sunday 5th March 2017 – THAT WAS A …

Friday 3rd March 2017 – PHEW!

Thursday 2nd March 2017 – AS YOU MIGHT EXPECT …

Wednesday 1st March 2017 – THE TROUBLE …

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

Saturday 25th February 2017 – IT’S THE START …

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