Tag Archives: belgium

Friday 8th May 2015 – HERE …

.. is where I spent last night – at a motorway service area at Heverlee, near Leuven. And I slept the sleep of the dead too – totally painless it was. Didn’t feel a thing.

And even better, there was a nice hot shower available too. And didn’t I enjoy that? I haven’t felt so good in ages.

Mind you, I forgot to buy a bottle of water and so my morning coffee, in a roadside rest area while they cleared away an accident down the road, and coffee made with sparkling water is certainly different, that’s for sure.

I wasted the morning not doing very much at all, and then met up with Alison for lunch. Alison and I worked together for an American company for almost a year, and we both walked out at more-or-less the same time. And for the same reasons – basically that American companies have no idea of the notion of cultivating staff loyalty, and rule their employees by fear. There’s no place in my environment, nor in Alison’s environment either, for an attitude such as that, and we can’t understand why it is that other people allow themselves to be pushed around.

Afterwards, I went to check up on Marianne and to have a chat. It’s hard to believe that it’s two years since she passed away, but then at this sort of age time passes quickly.

It seems that I wasn’t the only person to go to visit her either, for there were a couple of other pots of flowers that had been left on her grave. I’m glad that she hasn’t been forgotten and that she is being looked after by people locally. It’s not feasible for me to come to Brussels to tend to her as often as I like.

It’s also VE day today – the end of the War in Europe, so it’s only right to go to pay a visit to the interred in another part of the cemetery here at Ixelles. There are some military graves here, but there are also some graves of civilian victims of the Gestapo.

There are many people, one or two of my acquaintances amongst them unfortunately, who criticise the French and the Belgians, and a few other people too, for what they see as a lack of resolution by the population of those countries when it came to resisting the German invaders.

But if you have a look at these gravestones, you’ll see fusillé – “shot”, or executé – executed, or decapité – decapitated. These were the risks that people were running every day for four and a half years of the Occupation, so it’s hard to be as resolute as some might like when you are risking all of this.

And, of course, it’s very easy to beat the drum when there’s an ocean between you and the invader. I’d be interested to see just how brave these critics would have been had they been over here amongst the Gestapo during the Occupation.

I braved the rush-hour traffic and set out for Germany. I’d forgotten just how busy the roads could be on a Friday afternoon and I’m glad that I’m no longer involved in any of this.
And here I am crossing the border into Germany not too far from Aachen at the back of Liege.

The camera on my new phone has quite a high resolution and isn’t far off what the Nikon D5000 can come up with on a good day. It’s also easy to use on the move so moving pictures are back with us again.

However, I needed to be careful. Can you make out the blue flashing lights just down the road? I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had been waiting for me.

It seems that I have entered my destinations into the Satnav in the wrong order and it’s doing the route backwards. That’s clearly no good so I need to change it all. At a rest area at the side of the Autobahn I pulled up to reprogramme it, but then I thought “what they heck” and it’s here where I’m going to be bedding down, German police permitting.

And talking of the Police, I’ve managed this year to avoid having a run-in with the Belgian police this year. Either my luck was in or else they must have been all asleep.

-3

Thursday 7th May 2015 – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME …

… that you saw one of these? I can’t even remember when it was that I saw one in the UK, so I never expected to find one parked in a supermarket car park in Brussels.

I can’t remember when it was that they stopped making them but I don’t recall any later than the mid 70s so this one is at least 40 years old.

But make the most of it, because it’s not going to be here for long. To be frank, it’s an absolute nail, full of rust and rot and simply painted over, rust, rot and all, as a display advert. What a waste of a good old BMC Minivan

Here’s where I spent the night last night, at a motorway service area at Nivelles, on the outskirts of Brussels.

I didn’t think that I had had a particularly comfortable sleep, but I must have done, for I was off on my travels during the night. Playing in goal for Pionsat’s 3rd XI as it happens. And then I was off to see my friend Kris. She was living up on the moors right near the crest, and had a huge pile of wood that needed sorting out and would I help her?

Not too far away, on the edge of a village right on the crest, was a Muslim monastery (yes!) just like a huge castle but with an enormous tower in the centre. Round and comparatively modern (like Flemisn 15th Century architecture) it was 14 storeys high but the 14th storey had fallen off. each of the remaining storeys was let out as a separate apartment.

Each time Krys and I went somewhere we saw the tower from a different viewpoint and each time I asked her what it was, and each time she told me.

I’ve sorted out the gas issue by buying what I needed from a sports outfitters here. I reckoned that it would be cheaper then paying to eat out every night, but having had to buy it in Belgium, I’m not so sure. The price was totally shocking.

I’ve solved the beichstuhl issue too. Seeing as how IKEA was right next door to the sports outfitters, I paid them a visit. I’ve bought a galvanised metal pail, and also the curtains seeing as they had the exact colour that I need. And as you might expect, it was the most expensive that they had. I always seem to have the most expensive tastes and I just wish that I had the money to back it up.

Talking of expensive tastes, I’ve found exactly the worktops that I want for the bathrrom and the kitchen.

A mere €295 per square metre, but it really is beautiful and I would love to have this about the house. The biggest problem is that the worktop in the bathroom needs to be 45cms and in the kitchen 50cms, and the smallest sinks in IKEA (they have to be factory-fitted) are 45cms for the bathroom and 50cms for the kitchen.

That’s clearly not going to work so I need to have a really good think about this.

For lunch I stopped off at the Etangs Mellaerts to eat my honey and nut bread, and to watch an old woman feeding the ducks and swans.

As you can see, she had quite a crowd around her – clearly the most popular form of waterfront entertainment.

And at least, I could watch it from the van. For tea tonight I went to my favourite restaurant in Ixelles for a falafel supper, and ended up having to park a hundred miles away . Parking in Brussels these days is something of a joke, that’s for sure.

I’ve also been to sort out the bank as well. I needed to activate my bank cards for my forthcoming trip to Canada. And I took advantage while I was there of sorting out a few financial arrangements. I visited the Post Bank too – I had completely forgotten about an account there and that has been frozen. I need to contact them to reactivate it.

But here’s a thing – it’s the first time that I’ve ever been to the Post Office at Schuman and been served straight away without ever having to queue. That’s a record.

So tonight I’m on the motorway service area not too far from Leuven. I hope that the showers are working because they weren’t this morning at Nivelles.

-3

Wednesday 6th May 2015 – DOESN’T CALIBURN LOOK SMART …

… with his new front number plate?

Here we were, going up the autoroute to wards Paris yesterday late afternoon in a howling gale and I stopped to make what is called a “comfort break”. Going back to Caliburn afterwards, I noticed that the white refelective part of his number plate was detaching itself from the background.

Cheap number plates, I suppose, and here I was off to Germany for two weeks. If it all comes apart in Germany I’ll be sunk, and the controle technique as soon as I return, I could do with having this fixed instanter.

Back on the autoroute again and we drove around the town of Nemours. And there on the Trading Estate I could just about make out one of these car accessory places. 18:55 it was, 5 minutes to chucking-out time, but nevertheless when I arrived they were still there. The plate cost an arm and a leg as you might expect, but they also had a fitting service for a couple of Euros. Anyway, there wasn’t much option. It’s cheaper than a fine and I’m going to have to have the number plate anyway for the controle technique. May as well do it now as later.

I’m not sure whether you can see it in the photo but I now have my dash cam installed. I had that running for the journey. It’s cheap, as you can tell by the price and by the quality of materials, and the instructions, written in basic Chinglish, are, shall we say, “unhelpful”. However, it does what it says it does, and quite good enough for what I want, although I’m going to have to stop talking to myself when I’m driving.

I was on the road by 15:00, having spent the morning tidying the house and doing a little cleaning, and I arrived here at about 23:45 after several stops. One of which was at Melun, where I discovered a new takeaway where they did me proud.

On the way up, though, I started to make a list of things that I have forgotten, including the cooking stove and the portable beichstuhl.

It’s going to be one of THOSE journeys, isn’t it?

-2

Thursday 9th October 2014 – WELL, I WAS RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING.

I missed the connection at Brussels.

And not by 5 or 10 minutes either, but by a whopping couple of hours too. It took all night to evacuate this ill person and her baggage and we were about a couple of hours late before we took to the sky.

The flight itself and the food were excellent but the in-flight entertainment was rather rubbish. There wasn’t a single film that I was interested in seeing. On the Sports Channel however there was the World Cup semi-final between Brazil and Germany from 2014- the match where in a devastating spell of just 6 minutes half-way through the first half the Germans totally demolished the Brazilians.

At Brussels, those of us with onward journeys to attend to had to regroup in order to see what they airline had in store for us. For me, they could move me onwards to Paris via … errrr … Frankfurt am Main. That was clearly out of the question. However, there was one person who was flying on to Lyon and so that gave me an idea. When I was at Montreal I heard them call an Air Transat flight to Lyon and while I’m not overly impressed with Air Transat, I still put into the back of my mind the idea to go around to the airport at Lyon to see what I could see and to spy out the land.

This seemed like the opportunity and so I made the appropriate noises at the airport staff. There was indeed flight to Lyon but at 17:00 in the afternoon, meaning that I had 5 hours to kill. A meal voucher for €16:00 to compensate me in part for the inconvenience meant that I could have a meal but even that voucher only made a slight hole in the price of the meal, prices in Belgium being what they are. But nevertheless, the choices of meal here seem to be better than what was on offer when I was stranded at Paris Charles de Gaulle last year.

For the rest of my stay in Brussels, I also took the opportunity to go for a wander around the airport, inside and outside. It’s been a long time, 9 years in fact, since I’ve been here and there was a time when I was here a couple of times a week, back in the good old days.

So braving the horrendous weather outside, because it really was bad outside, I went for a look around.

There have been some tremendous changes to the airport in this time. Outside, there’s an enormous amount of redevelopment and much of the old building is being swept away and replaced ith more modern stuff.

There have been even more changes inside the place. A huge programme of expansion has taken place with all kinds of new terminals and departure gates and I do have to admit that it is quite a significant leg-up from how it all used to be in the past.

The plane to Lyon was one of these small 70-seater things with about 40 passengers on it. The flight took a quite reasonable 75 minutes which wasn’t bad at all, even if there was no special meal for me. That came as no surprise seeing as how I’d chopped and changed from one flight to another – it can’t be helped. I was glad that I had had a meal at Zaventam. And descending into Lyon through a thunderstorm, we were being tossed around like a cork on the ocean. Not for the faint-hearted, this descent.

Lyon was a very nice airport, quite modern and up-to-date, and the tram connection to town, quite shockingly expensive at €15:70, was nevertheless straighforward and direct, to right opposite the main railway station in town. No issues whatever with this at all (apart from the cost of course).

The ticket for the train to Riom cost a mere €16:00 with my senior citizen’s railcard (and that puts into perspective the astonishing price of the tram ticket) but there was a wait of 100 minutes for my train. No mind – it gave me an opportunity to look around outside the station. In the square behind the railway station there were all kinds of food shops, including a Subway sandwich store so I grabbed a foot-long vegetarian and orange juice there – that was tea sorted out.

Further investigation revealed that just a 10-minute stagger away from here is one of these Premier Class tourist hotels. A modern unit-type hotel with en-suite facilities.

So the verdict on Lyon as a departure point for Montreal? Well, even if the only flight offered is an Air Transat service, then I am no longer going to struggle all of the way out to Paris Charles de Gaulle. Apart from the tram fare, everything else that I would need is right here in front of me at Lyon, much more so than at the airport hotels in Paris. There will also be a saving of over €200 on my travelling costs and that, dear reader, is all that you need to know.

The train to Riom presented no problems whatever, and Terry was there to meet me at the station. Liz and Terry offered me a bed for the night, for which I was extremely grateful, and I was out like a light. It had been a long day.

Friday 9th May 2014 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about the sleep issues last night – but not by very much. Although it did take a while to get off to sleep, once I did finally drop off I remember nothing whatsoever until about 07:15 when I woke upto find my little spec here as deserted as the Mary Celeste.

Mind you, it’s not quite true that I remember nothing. In fact I was being interviewed by the local tax inspector who professed total astonishment that my outgoings were exactly the same as my incomings, before any allowance for food and other such personal expenses. I had to explain that some of the outgoings were notional outgoings, that quite often I was fed at work, and that I really was living on the breadline, giving them a tour of my apartment in Jette and showing them the repairs.

So on with the motley today and this is where I start work.

The road between the Belgian border here near Rocroi and Nevers in the Bourgogne is one of the best in the world. It has everything, except the St Lawrence of course, but it also has loads of history and we pass through one of the most devastating battlefields of the war. Not the Somme, or Ieper, or Verdun, but the Marne where the French held off the Germans for four years.

It also has abandoned motorways.

Well, not really abandoned, but in the late 1990s the French built this superb 10-km stretch of motorway to bypass Rocroi and brought it all the way to the Belgian border, and here it sits because the Belgians won’t extend it.

It really is the Road to Nowhere.

The town of Rocroi is interesting, though.

This part of France has always been the cockpit of Europe with invading armies from everywhere crossing back and forth. Many of the nobles fortified their houses and the local churches and even a few hills, and so the King of France ordered a fortified city to be built here.

It’s a typical star-shaped fortress and contrary to what people might think, it’s not a Vauban fortress because it was built in the mid 16th Century, over 100 years before he was born. Nevertheless, he did come here and make a few improvements to the original design.

The fortifications are still almost complete today, and that’s quite astonishing. Some has fallen down and a couple of modern gateways have been pierced through, but nothing, apart from the original narrow gates, seems to have been demolished.

About 10 kms outside the town, the main road passes over a culvert that I have always been convinced was a former railway line.

One of the tasks of today was to track it down and sure enough, here it is. A local yokel (who was not a very vocal local yokel unfortunately) told me that it ran to Rimogne where there were important slate quarries. He remembers it as a boy but it’s been closed for years now.

Winding my way through the Ardennes I come to the town of Rethel.

This is a beautiful little town on the banks of the Aisne with plenty of history. And you might think that the history is reflected in the old buildings here. But in many cases you might be wrong because much of the town and some of the “historic” buildings date from no earlier than 1920, and some from 1945.

The town hall here for example, is from the early 1930s

In 1914 at the start of World War I the town was burnt down (it’s not just in Canada that this happens) and the invading German soldiers did the rest. Rethel was one of the major German garrison towns behind the front line of the Marne battlefields.

In 1940 the town was smashed by General Guderian’s Panzers who passed this way on their race to the coast and then to the Swiss frontier.

The high Champagne plateau is famous for its sugar beet and its wind turbines. There are dozens of each all over the place, and here is one of the bigger sugar beet plants. It’s owned by CADSAR EUROLUZ, whoever they might be, and you can see some wind turbines in the background.

It makes quite an impressive photograph, which is no surprise, as it’s an impressive building in quite an impressive setting.

You’ll all know of this roundabout because I’ve talked about this quite often. It’s on what is the highest point of the plateau and 6 roads come into it. It’s here that we turn south, direction Chalons.

What is remarkable about it is that it is here that the air changes. Standing up on the top here you can feel the difference in the air – to the north and west it’s all claggy and oppressive but to the south it’s a lost fresher and a lot more inspiring in the same way that the air in North America is. It’s something that I can’t explain.

Final stop is one of the biggest German war cemeteries in Northern France. Over 12,000 soldiers, and more arrive each year as they are exhumed from farmland, are in here, four to a grave. There are quite a few Jewish graves and also quite a few soldiers with Polish names because, don’t forget, Poland didn’t exist at this period and was partitioned between German, Austria and Russia

There are probably a few French names in here too because Alsace-Lorraine was part of Germany at this time and soldiers from there were conscripted into the German army.

So tonight I’m at the American war memorial at Blanc Mont. This is one of the highest points on the Marne front line and was heavily fortified by the Germans. There are still the remains of trenches here. The hill was stormed by the Americans under Pershing at the beginning of October 1918 and the Germans pushed back.

And as you might expect, the monument is closed for repair so it can’t be visited. No surprise there, is there?

-1

Thursday 8th May 2014 – I HAD THE BEST …

… night’s sleep that I have ever had in Caliburn, to be sure. I was late dozing off – round about midnight I reckon, but I remember nothing else until the alarm went off at 07:30. Even the morning’s heavy traffic didn’t wake me up. I’ll remember this spec – down at Boisfort on the road out towards the motorway and tucked behind a hedge on the road at the side – for another time.

So once I was organised, I went to park Caliburn on the hypermarket car park and I was off on the Metro once I found the entrance to the station.

First stop was the Troc. All of Marianne’s possessions have been sold, so it seems, and her account cleared. Similar news at the Bank too – the notaire has done the necessary there.

One of the things that I needed to do was to make my annual report to Marianne and check on her grave now that her gravestone has been installed.

The gravestone contains several errors that need to be corrected and so I’ll have to get on to that pretty smart-ish. But at least an all-over stone means that no work is required to maintain her grave. That was always going to be my biggest headache.

Anyway, it’s hard to believe that a year has gone past since she went to meet her maker, and I hope that she is happy wherever she might be.

After that, I turned my attention to happier things and WHA…HEY! I’ve booked my annual journey to Canada. Leaving 28 August and returning 8th October (actually 9th October as it’s a night flight). And with booking so far in advance and not travelling at a weekend the flight works out even cheaper than my previous two flights there, which is excellent news. Just €580 including taxes (which are more than the base price of the flight, would you believe?)

That’s not the best of it either. Had I wanted to go via Air Transat it would have cost me €50 less, if that were possible, but I’m flying Air Canada – a flagship airline too at that price – direct on the outbound flight and via Brussels on the return. I’m quite pleased with that deal, as you might guess, and I’m pleased that Connections, my travel agents, came up with the goods.

I’ve booked 4 nights at that hotel at the Cote de Liesse on the edge of Montreal where I stayed last year. That gives me plenty of opportunity to continue my exploration of the city so I need to make a list of things that I would like to see. I need to focus myself much more positively this year.

I’ve booked another big Dodge too and I do hope that I get one – I’ve heard a nasty rumour that Avis are planning to change over to Fords and the Ford Flex isn’t half as versatile as a Grand Caravan. That was a good deal too, better than last year.

The plan is to explore Montreal, then do the Richelieu Valley in the reverse direction (I hope that they have good mirrors on the car) then go to the Maine State Fair and tractor pull at Clinton. From there to the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival at Fredericton and then I’ll be off to Cape Breton, Newfoundland and then back to Labrador ro complete my visit of Highway 138 and then retrace my steps along the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Such is the plan but as we all know, “the best-laid plans of mice and men” etc etc.

One final task before I leave Brussels. They’ve fitted new brake shoes at the rear of Caliburn but I clearly interrupted them when I arrived to pick him up yesterday, for they had of course slackened off the handbrake cable to remove the brake pads but in the confusion they forgot to tighten it up so I had no rear brakes and no handbrake to speak of when I left the garage.

Now we are all happy again.

Leaving Brussels in a rainstorm, with traffic queues and roadworks all the way beyond Charleroi and I’m now in a lay-by with a couple of lorries in the foothills of the Ardennes near Couvin. Still not out of Belgium, but as my adventure starts at the frontier just up the road, I don’t want to do it in the rain and the gloom of the evening. Who knows? It might brighten up in the morning.

But I won’t have the sleep that I had last night anyway – the rain is bouncing off Caliburn’s roof and it sounds like a drum in the back.

-2

Wednesday 7th May 2014 – I MUST HAVE HAD A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP …

… despie the howling gale that was blowing in around the badly-fitted double glazing units.

During the night, I was back in the UK (well, it’s not all that far from here and you don’t need a ferry for your nocturnal perambulations anyway) with the long-suffering Nerina and I couldn’t take her somewhere on the following day (a Monday) as I’d promised Maria, a Greek girl with whom I was quite friendly when I worked at the EU, that I would do something for her at some place that she had told me and which I knew, but which has now gone out of my head once I woke up.

Nerina wanted to know what it was, and I thought that it was a motorway service area and so probably I had to pick her up off a coach or something. Anyway, our phone wasn’t working properly – when people called us, the phone didn’t ring – so one of us had to stay by the phone (nothing in your dreams is logical, is it?) and I had promised to take Zero to the adventure circus on the Sunday night, so poor Nerina drew the short straw, again.

I took Zero to the circus and right at the end they opened the mudbath for the children. After a couple of minutes of vacillation, one girl leapt in fully clothed, up to her knees, and once she was in, all the others followed suit.

I was then interrupted by another friend, someone from waaayyyyyy back, asking me why I hadn’t done the shopping, to which I replied that I was booked up until Tuesday morning, and what did he need that we didn’t have? He replied “well, wine, of course” – something that brought a smile to my face.

Meanwhile I had lost sight of my charge and had to chase around looking for her and eventually I found her all cold wet and muddy, wrapped in a big fluffy white towel. I had to wash her and shower her off to get her nice, warm and clean again.

So despite all of the excitement of the night, I was once more awake before the alarm went off so I managed to have a good hour or so on the computer before breakfast. Downstairs at breakfast though, I was joined by a coach-load of British tourists and I had forgotten how much I hate the “little England” provincial attitude of the aforementioned, even if it was my bread-and-butter for 13 years in the late 70s, 80s and 90s. I’m glad I don’t have to mix with them today.

Still, never mind. The Hotel New Astoria didn’t let me down. The bed and breakfast that I had for €45 plus local taxes has to be the best deal that I have had on my travels these last few years, despite the company.

Having dealt with the issues of breakfast etc I went for a wander around. I’d seen some kind of ship working just offshore last night in the doom and gloom and lo! and behold – here she was again. Quite an old ship by the looks of things and probably a dredger too, she’s called the Pinta.

Presumably named after one of the three ships – the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria and not after an old Milk Marketing Board advert. And anyway, she looked as if she was old enough to have accompanied Columbus on his travels

On my way back to the station area I found, much to my surprise, a free ferry that crosses the harbour to the other side. I’ve not noticed that before and I wonder why not because I’ve been to Oostende dozens, if not hundreds of times.

As you know with ferries because I’ve told you before, every time I see a ferry it makes me cross, especially if it’s free, and so here I am sailing, or rather, dieseling, across the harbour. No sense in missing out, is there?

The other side of the harbour is also somewhere else that I’ve never visited and, once more, I can’t think for the life of me whyever not.

It’s quite historic over here and all kinds of things are happening, or are on display, or are simply “there”. Like this old barque called, incidentally, the Oostende moored here at the foot of the lighthouse. There has to be a story about this kind of ship and I wonder what it might be.

And, more to the point, why it isn’t moored up with the Mercator, another historic survivor fro the days of sail.

You don’t need me to tell you the story about all of this, do you?

Oostende was one of the more important ports along the coast facing the UK and the Germans had something of a fragile hold here. The ports along the coast, Oostende and Zeebrugge, had been raided in force in World War I and the unsuccessful landing at Dieppe in 1942 showed that the Allies had not forgotten the importance of these ports in World War II.

The Germans thus fortified them as part of the Atlantic Wall defences that I showed you a couple of years ago, and the fortifications still remain.

From this side of the harbour I managed a closer look at Larkspur.

There was no-one around who really knew what was going on with her – I asked a couple of people and they each gave totally different answers – but there was a couple of people in industrial safety clothing on the deck and I noticed a few rubbish skips present at the scene.

From my untutored eye it looked like they were gutting the ship of anything that was of high value in preparation for sending what remains of her to Turkey or India where she will doubtless be turned into a couple of thousand baked bean tins.

What a sad end.

After a marathon hike around the docks (because it is) I made it to the station for the 14:45 train and that had me back in Brussels by 16:00. I picked up Caliburn, did a few bits of shopping, had an excellent falafel supper at that place near Marianne’s and now I’ll be settling down for the night.

I hope.

-2

Tuesday 6th May – I’M GLAD I WENT TO BED EARLY LAST NIGHT …

… because at about 02:00 the refrigeration unit of the lorry parked across from me suddenly sprung into action.

And it was rattling away for about half an hour and just when I thought tht it ould never stop and I was thinking about giving it up and moving on, it cut out as dramatically as it had started and we all managed to go back to sleep.

And no harm done either as I was awake long before the alarm went off too and I even had time to make myself a coffee. No hot water in the Gentlemen’s rest rooms so that ruled out the possibility of a good wash and shave.

There’s no ticket machine at the terminus at Berchem St Agathe and the bus driver wouldn’t change €20 so I ended up at the railway station with a 40 minute wait for a train to the Centre. Fird train that passed was the train that I used to take to go to work when I worked at Boisfort. I was debating whether to take it and do my business around Schuman first, and I wish that I had now because my train was cancelled and I ended up with over an hour to wait. It’s just like a third-world country here.

Anyway I hopped onto the next train going to Schuman and started from there, albeit an hour later than planned.

I dealt with the stuff that needed doing in the city centre and then caught the train back to Caliburn, and doesn’t the rolling stock look modern compared to the relics of the 40s and 50s that they still had here when I used to go to work?

There’s a fritkot right by the station at Berchem and the smell was overpowering. And it was lunchtime too and so I fell by the wayside.

Caliburn is now in the garage having his check-up and I set off to the station. I’m having a night out and so I’m going to the seaside – and why not? It must be all of 2 months since I’ve seen the sea, and it’s not all that expensive on the SNCB, certainly when compared to railways in the UK.

I wouldn’t have made it here to Oostende and back on the amount of diesel that the railfare would have bought me

I’ve found a cheap hotel, the Hotel New Astoria, for the night and I really did forget just how tacky these package holiday resort hotels can be, even down to the organist in the lounge at night. This brings back a few memories I can assure you.

As for value for money, no complaints here at all. I’m quite happy from that point of view.

Down the the docks to see what’s happening and first port … "ahem" – ed … of call has to be the old Larkspur, now apparently known as Lark.

Built in 1976 (so I’m surprised that they didn’t change her name to Ark), which is well past her sell-by date according to EU legislation, she was formerly pride of a couple of ferry fleets, especially the Sally Line with whom she sailed for years as Sally Sky and then Eurotraveller.

She ended her days as the flagship of Trans-European Ferries, who inherited, at several removes, the old National Belgian shipping line that ran between Oostende and Dover. Without the financial backing of the Belgian government, which struggled even so to keep the line running, no-one made a success of the line and TEF was the final fling, having worked some kind of deal with the town of Ramsgate about running into the harbour there.

Now she’s sitting here rusting away while her future is debated.

You have probably seen Larkspur’s sister. A video of her being run aground full steam ahead on a beach in Turkey to be broken was posted on the internet a few months ago and did the tour of the world in seconds flat.

But it’s sad to see her, or any ship for that matter, end her days as a rusting hulk.

She wasn’t the only ship in the harbour either. There were a couple of cruise ships moored here too.

One of them was totally inaccessible but the other one, the Delphin out of Nassau, was moored up next to Larkspur which must have been a different kind of experience for the holidaymakers.

Or maybe it isn’t, for the Delphin is even older than the Larkspur, being built in 1975 and her claim to fame is that she was refloated after sinking in Singapore harbour in 1992 and subsequently undegoing a full refit.

The Delphin was also apparently a former a car ferry – or at least, that’s the impression that I gained after learning that her refit included "welding closed the opening bow doors". She was formerly based at Odessa in the Soviet Union and owned by the Black Sea Shipping Company.

Since then she has passed through many hands, several of them ending in bankruptcy.

There was something of a crowd on the jetty opposite the Delphin and on making enquiries I was told that she was just about to depart. And even as we were speaking, a tug sidled up alongside and a line was heaved aboard.

One the line had been secured, the Delphin cast off from the quayside and with a little "slow astern" and probably some "left hand down a bit" too and "full speed ahead" from the tug, the Delphin slid away from the quayside and executed a beautiful 180° turn in the harbour.

Poetry in motion, you might say.

Now that she was pointing in the correct direction, it was "full steam ahead" and she set off into the setting sun with her full load of passengers – next port of call Ijmuiden in the Netherlands.

I set off too in search of food and ended up with the worst, and probably the most expensive, falafel supper that I have ever had the misfortune to eat. That was a real disappointment after the excellent falafel suppers that I have had in Brussels.

Anyway, that was enough excitement for me. Back to the hotel where I discovered that I had forgotten to bring with me my USB key with my collection of feature films downloaded from http://www.archive.org.

Never mind – I had an early night instead.

-1

Monday 5th May 2014 – I KNEW THAT IT WAS A MISTAKE …

… to have that final cup of coffee. Despite being nice and comfortable in my little bed – no complaints there of course – I couldn’t get off to sleep and I was watching dawn break through the windscreen at one moment. I think that the best sleep that I had was the hour or so after the alarm went off, to be honest.

Mind you, no complaints about the choice of service area either. This was quite quiet and isolated and with the “usual offices” close to hand, which is always a bonus.

The coffee was still warm in the flask as well and so that saved on brewing up too.

Once that was organised, I could hit the road, but not before laughing at some Parisian’s idea of parking. Why take up one place when you can take up four? No wonder that all of the other French people that I know don’t have a very high opinion of Parisians.

The journey to Brussels was quite uneventful but I realised that I would be too late to do what I needed to do as I wouldn’t be there before lunchtime, so I hit the shops at Waterloo. And Media Markt was having a sale so I stocked up on a pile of DVDs. There’s enough there to keep me out of mischief.

In Brussels, Caliburn’s annual check-up is fixed for Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning and so I need to find something to do for Tuesday night. And I have a cunning plan too! Just wait an see!

A visit to IKEA is always compulsory espcially as I have a few little things to buy, and I finally found a sofa that is what I want for the house, whenever that it might be that I’m ready for it. But I’m not holding my breath, as you can imagine;

However I saw the funny side of something that happened in IKEA and when I find my micro-SD card converter I’ll show you a photo of it.

After having had multi-level marketing

on an Air Transat flight last year, we now have staggered opening times for different nationalities. This must be something of a first in the Developed World, although of course it is Belgium and anything can happen here.

As indeed it did. Half an hour after typing these words I had a run-in with the Belgian police – yet again. And it wasn’t as if I was doing anything either. I was quietly parked up at the side of the road reading a book. Either Caliburn or Yours Truly is well-known to the Belgian police, I reckon. But then again I recognised one of the policemen – he was one of the two with whom I’d had a “frank exchange of views” last year, so he was probably getting his own back.

God how I hate this country.

Anyway, If that’s not enough excitement for the day, while I was parked up at the motorway service area outside the town (and outside the jurisdiction of the poilce of Bruxelles-Capitale, I ended up repairing some young guy’s car that had broken down and later I witnessed a collision between two lorries on the car park.

It really IS all happening here.

-3

Sunday 4th May 2014 – I HOPE THAT YOU ALL HAD …

… a happy Star Wars day. Yes, May the fourth be with you, all of you.

As for me, I had a Happy Star Wars day, and for two reasons too.
Firstly, I had the first produce out of my garden. Only a handful of lettuce leaves, nothing to get too excited about, and especially since they were from bought baby lettuce that was planted and grown on, but garden produce just the same and it tasted beautiful.
Secondly, I had my first soalr shower of the year. And admittedly the water was only 26.4°C so I had to add 5 litres of hot water, but that solar hot water came out of the dump load for surplus electrical energy so it was all mine anyway. And besides, it was the first go in the new shower cabinet and that was exciting too.

Yes, you’re right. Surplus electrical energy. We finally had the day that we were promised for yesterday, with beautiful sunshine and not all that much cloud in the sky. And about time too.

And I missed some of it as well. With it being Sunday I had a long lie-in until 09:40 for which I was very grateful. Then after breakfast I carried on with the web pages. I’ll get them up-to-date if it kills me in the process.

After lunch I swept out the rear of Caliburn and now he’s clean and tidy. He has a bed – the one that I shortened the other day – suspended from the sides, and a matress abd clean bedding and it’s all looking quite comfortable in there.

When I had finished tea I washed up, finished loading Caliburn and then hit the road. 21:30, it was when I set off and by 02:00 I was somewhere between Paris and Lille in a service area having stopped off for 10 minutes to fuel up and pour some coffee out of the flask for me.

And now I’m going to try out the bed.

-1

Saturday 3rd May 2014 – I’VE BEEN A LITTLE PREMATURE …

… about these batteries, so it seems. The problem has been that it’s not been quite dark when I’ve taken the readings and when I’ve been out the next morning to check, the sun has been up for an hour or two, so the voltage reading is being distorted by the amount of energy being received.

However, it’s possible to program the charge controller to show Minimum Volts, and that’s what I’ve done. And that reading isn’t anything like what I was hoping it to be. But the barn is lit by a few of these 1-watt LED lighting strips and they are plenty bright enough even with a lower-than-expected voltage so no harm is being done. The batteries are certainly good enough to power them and I don’t need anthing more than that for the time being.

So apart from that, what else?

I had a late night last night and so it was a struggle to crawl out of bed this morning. But I did, and at a reasonably-respectable time too.

And I worked on the web site too and uploaded a pile of pages – the effort of the last couple of weeks on the North Shore of the St Lawrence River. If you go to this page and follow all of the links, you’ll see the … gulp … 18 pages that I’ve uploaded.

And I’m nowhere near the end quite yet either.

This afternoon I’ve been tidying up a little. That’s right – only a little. As you know, I’m off on my travels on Sunday night as I have a few things to attend to in Brussels. And for that I need to find a few papers and a Bank Card – hence the urgency.

Anyway, much of the stuff has been found and I can now head off tomorrow night in reasonable peace, once I’ve cleaned out Caliburn. The back of the van is in a desoerate state after having had all of that mess inside it.

So apart from that, not much else to tell you about. I haven’t done too much else.

What is a real shame though is that my little attic doesn’t look very much different after my tidying-up session, despite the two bags of rubbish that I took out. All of this is very depressing.

And the glorious, clear skies that the weathermen promised us today. Ptah!! That’s very depressing too!

-1

Sunday 23rd February 2014 – PHEW!

No wonder I’m so flaming tired all the time, if last night is anything to go by.

There I was in South-West London, renting a room in a house and to reach the area of London where the house was, there was a zig-zag climb up to a plateau rather like the way in to Marcillat from the Montlucon road only, of course, all built-up and urbanised.

I was talking to a girl who was something to do with a business, down at the business premises at the foot of the climb, talking about the house in which I was living, and she was expressing her astonishment that here in the inner suburbs of London there was a house that had three wind turbines powering all of the electricity (I do actually have three wind turbines here).

The conversation was interrupted as I needed to go to Brussels in Belgium. There, I met Anne-Marie in a café half-way up the Boulevard Léopold II near to the Simonis transport hub. She was wanting to see more of the parts of Brussels that she didn’t know, and the area of Molenbeek and Koekelberg (served by the Simonis hub) is an area that I know quite well.

But Anne-Marie. She joined the EU at about the same time that I did and was part of this little group of us that went around together. I had quite a soft spot for her and we went on a couple of skiing trips together. She would have been a good partner for me, I always reckoned, as she had a knack of bringing my feet back firmly to the floor whenever I went off on one of my regular flights of fancy. But as is usual, though, I would have been far too much hard work for someone “normal” and so nothing ever happened. Another “one that got away”, the lucky girl.

But let’s return to the issue at hand. Despite all of the contemporary stuff that was going on in the Boulevard Leopold II, it was in fact early 1914 and the eve of World War I. Some German notable, von Something zu Somewhat, was there trying to negotiate something with some Belgian politicians and my task, if I chose to accept it, was to find out who he was and what he was doing and who he was negotiating with and why. On the eve of World War I, everyone in Europe was nervous.

So once I had ascertained his name, I contacted MI6 to see if he was “known” to the British authorities. I didn’t receive a reply but it turned out that the principal reason why he was there was that he (only a young guy) had made a young girl pregnant because he needed a child in order to inherit something. But this girl was not ready to have herself “announced” to all the world. Therefore there was some machination about producing the baby, with a spurious mother, and producing the real mother at a later date.

I suggested that he should have produced a spurious baby as well and saved all of this pantomime, but this didn’t go down too well at all.

After all of that running around Northern Europe for 100 years when I should have been sleeping, I didn’t feel too bad about staying in bed until 10:10 this morning. And after breakfast I just mooched around for a while.

There should have been some footy this afternoon – I had a choice of the 1st XI at Lempdes – about a 90-minute drive away – or the 2nd XI at home against the Goatslayers, both kick-offs at 13:00. Of course, I chose the Goatslayers at home, and so of course the match was postponed, as I found out when I arrived at the ground.

But with the glorious summer weather today (180.1 amp-hours of surplus solar energy, 66°C in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load), firstly I aired all of the bedding that I use in Caliburn – it’s been in its suitcase in the barn since early November, and secondly, I had a look at Caliburn’s auxilliary electrical circuits.

The solar panel on Caliburn’s roof rack hasn’t been charging up the second battery for a while and neither has the split-charging relay that works off the main battery. It turns out that the cheap charge controller that I bought years ago in the UK has burnt itself out. Luckily, in one of these solar briefcase kits that I bought years ago and which broke when it fell off the LDV’s roof, there was a charge controller that was now sitting around doing nothing. Consequently, that’s now wired in the circuit and seems to be working.

As for the split charger, after much furkling arouns and bad temper and cursing, I found that there was a poor earth connection. Once that was all cleaned up and greased and sanded, that now works as it should.

But with having almost dismantled the auxilliary electric circuit, I decided to tidy it all up. It really was such a mess. Now it’s all shipshape and Bristol-fashion, bolted to the bulkhead as it should be, and out of the way of where I’m likely to trip over it. But I’m still not all that happy – I can do much better than this and I will do too.

But me? Working on a Sunday? Things are getting to me, aren’t they?

And this evening, no pizza. Not that I can’t make one, but that the temperature up here is 18.4°C, and that’s with no heating on either. If I light the fire I’d be melted out long before the pizza would be cooked.

This winter is thoroughly crazy.

-6

Monday 4th November 2013 – THE DEED IS DONE

Marianne’s apartment has now been sold and her estate liquidated. And when I see just the amounts to which everyone seems to have helped himself, there isn’t much of it left. “Vultures picking over the bones of a corpse” is what immediately springs to mind, and the metaphor seems to be quite apt. “Give everything that is left to the poor” said Marianne, and that’s what I will do, but I can’t help feeling that the poor are going to be rather disillusioned with the Vultures of Belgium.

First thing this morning was to roll up the mattress and bedding and have that ready to go. Second thing was to go to the DiY shop and purchase a new rubber gasket for the sink waste pipe outlet. I’ve fitted that and now the sink drains much better. Everything else that was hanging around went into the last cardboard box and the waste bin, and I put all of that outside along with the plants while I vacuumed everywhere.

The next-to-last thing that I did was to have a shower and to clean the bathroom and to pack up the suitcase of clothes. That went outside along with the shower curtain, and the final task was to read all of the meters.

Fetching Caliburn, I loaded all of the stuff up, and there wasn’t much room for anything else after that. I’d judged it quite fine. It’s a good job I wasn’t intending to take the plants with me – they are decorating the hall of the building now for people to do what they will with them.

I found a quiet nook and settled down with a good book until the relevant moment, and that was that. And I do recall saying to my lawyer as we left the building at the end “I won’t say a definitive goodbye to you, because I said that a couple of years ago and I still ended up coming back, but maybe we shall meet agin, a long time before Philippi”

I still have a few things to do in Brussels, not the least of which being to cancel the standing order about the payments to the apartment and also some things for Marianne, but that will have to wait for another time as I’ve rather lost interest in it all for now. I was on the motorway and out of that accursed nation.

At Melun, I stopped for fuel as usual but my friendly neighbourhood kebab house was closed. That was a disaster. However Dominos Pizza place was open and I ended up with yet another pizza vegetariana. And goodbye to the vegan cheese because I forgot to nip over the road earlier and buy some more.

But back on the motorway, round about midnight I was just overwhelmed with sleep and I’ve no idea why. I can’t keep going like I used to. Nothing for it but to pull off the highway and have a kip. I’m getting old.

-4

Sunday 3rd November 2013 – AND IN A CHANGE OF PLAN …

… I’ve been working today. Or, rather, what remained of today by the time that I got up. I wasn’t in much of a rush seeing as it’s Sunday.

Today was the day that absolutely everything that remained in the apartment, with the exception of what I want tomorrow morning, can be packed up and made ready to go. And not just that either – no-one came for the video and audio cassettes so I bagged them up into rubbish sacks and stuck the video cassettes in with the rubbish downstairs. The audio cassettes I put outside on the pavement with the broken clothes drier and, true to form, they disappeared during the course of the day.

The bed I dismantled – I’ll be sleeping on the mattress on the floor tonight, and the coffee and dining room tables I dismantled and wrapped in clingfilm – I can see the uses of this stuf during furniture removals.

So with all of that done, I bought myself a pizza (I shan’t be cooking again in here) and sat down to watch some gridiron until the late evening when it all went quiet. Then I went off down the road to rescue Caliburn and started descending all of the boxes in the lift (there were 7 lift-loads in all and I was hoping for no more than 5). It was at that moment that the concierge started to wash the hallway floor – 23:00 hours. He wasn’t pleased about me blocking the hallway, just as I wasn’t pleased about him washing the hallway at that time of night. He told me to put my stuff outside. Well, like I’m really going to do that in the pouring rain so I told him in no uncertain terms what he coud do with his broom handle and this led to yet another contretemps (long-term readers of this rubbish will know only to well that this is not the first contretemps that I have had with this ignorant peasant, but I digress)

So Caliburn is now almost fully-loaded, with more stuff that I was hoping to take back but there you are, and tomorrow is the final day, but we haven’t quite finished yet. The sink in the kitchen has now totally blocked up and there was no way of emptying it. Dropping my tea into the sink twice last week hadn’t helped. Taking the drain plug out of the elbow didn’t improve matters very much and so I bit the bullet and dismantled the entire system from the sink down to the main drain. And here was the culprit. Just in the downpipe from the sink, everything was all clogged up with a sub-human mass of congealed whatever that must have been there for a hundred years and Yours Truly was there for a good half hour chiselling it out.

So having finally dealt with what was left of Quatermass’s Experiment and seeing that the water was now draining out a hundred times better, I reassembled everything only to find that I’ve torn the rubber gasket that connects the downpipe to the sink and there’s quite a leak.

Ahh well – off to the DiY shop in the morning, I suppose. I could have done without this.

-3

Saturday 2nd November 2013 – WHEN THE ALARM WENT OFF THIS MORNING …

… I just rolled over and went back to sleep. Somehow I couldn’t summon up the energy to leave my comfy little bed here.

And when I finally did wake up, I decided that I would have something of an informal day of rest and not do too much. That was the cue for coffee in bed and a James Bond film, together with a good book.

That took me through until lunchtime and then I nipped out to the local shops for the baguette and the bits and pieces that I shall need for the journey home next week. Hard to think that this is effectively my final shopping expedition in Brussels, although I’ve said things like that before.

This evening, I went out again. No football in the Netherlands border area this evening, and none in the German border area either. There was however a match at the Argosstadionachterdekaserne, the home of KV Mechelen, where the home team was to entertain Zulte-Waregem.

People, including Yours Truly, do say that Belgians have no sense of humour, but you would be forgiven for thinking differently when you see the sign over the entrance gate to the stadium. You can tell that KV Mechelen aren’t doing so well in the league at the moment.

But the stadium itself, which must qualify for having one of the longest names in mainstream football, wasn’t easy to find. It was hemmed in right in the middle of an area of what would be in the UK some kind of Victorian working-class terraced housing and it did remind me of going to a football match in the UK back in the good old days of when all stadia used to be like this.

There was however some easy – and free – parking on the old railway goods yard about 500 metres away, and there were even a couple of marshalls to help everyone. Long time since I’ve seen this kind of thing.

The next thing was something of a shock though – unlike at Breda in the Netherlands last week, the stadium doesn’t accept payments by card – it’s cash only. And I wish now that I had paid with a card at the supermarket this afternoon rather than with cash. The nearest cash point was 1500 metres away, so I was told, and me with a bad foot too after my exploits with the coffee table earlier in the week. I didn’t need any of this. Mind you it was a good job that I arrived early.

So having procured a ticket, at €16:00, it was into the ground. And this was a surprise as well. A First Division game in one of Europe’s leading national leagues and the stadium had probably over 50% of its capacity as standing. When was the last time that you ever heard of this?

And as for the stadium itself, you can tell that they’ve never heard of the Taylor Report in Belgium either because this place wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes in England following the report on the condition of English football grounds after the fire at Bradford City. It really was like stepping back in time to the early 1970s in English football and you have no idea how comfortable it felt to be standing up on the terraces.

But I don’t care what anyone in authority has to say – the fans are totally correct in their opinion of all-seater stadia. With so many standees in the ground, the atmosphere really was electric for the entire 90 minutes and the Mechelen fans must be the noisiest that I have ever heard at a modern football match.

The Powers That Be want everyone to be seated at a football match as in a theatre or a cinema, and give polite applause whenever someone does anything merit-worthy and to keep quiet the rest of the game. That is total nonsense and is what has ruined the game as a spectator sport. Football is all about noise and atmosphere, 90 minutes of bedlam on the terraces, and you can’t do that sitting down. And it’s not just about the merit-worthy actions either. When Zulte-Waregem’s n°3 went down rather too easily and for far too long right under the referee’s nose and on the “popular side” after a challenge early in the game, the Mechelen fans were on his back for the rest of the match with whistles, jeers and abuse to such an extent that his captain swapped him over to the other, more sedate side of the field.

THAT is what real football is about.

People might think that that is being grossly unfair to the footballers concerned. Four or five years ago I remember Craig Bellamy being quite upset about the abuse that he was receiving from the crowd. Firstly, I don’t ever recall him complaining or being upset when the fans of his team were dishing it out to an opposing footballer, and secondly, I will gladly go and stand out in the middle of a football pitch for a whole 90 minutes and let 30,000 people hurl as much abuse as they like about me and my family for only 25% of the money that he is on.

As for the football however, we had a torrential rainstorm and a 2-2 draw, the result being a fair reflection of the balance of the play. And the best player on the field was the Zulte-Waregem centre-forward who scored both his team’s goals. A different class of player than the others on the field.

I’d seen a Turkish Fritkot on my way into town and so I stopped off there and, sure enough, they conjured up a plate of falafel and fritjes. I enjoyed them too, especially as I felt that I had earned them. I’ll miss all of that when I leave. But I’ll have to come back ina couple of weeks though – there’s a book sale in the car park and I must add to my collection a copy of “Honkie and Ponkie On The Moon”.

I’m depressed though about how much Vlaams I’ve forgotten, I really am. I must do something about this.

-5

EPIC HALL

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