Tag Archives: spa

Sunday 23rd December 2018 – SO THAT’S ANOTHER .

… thing crossed off my list of things to do.

Back in the early 1970s when I first started coming over to Oostende, I was always puzzled by the train that was waiting at the station for the passengers. Its destination was always Welkenraedt and I didn’t have a clue where Welkenraedt was.

A little later I had a look for where Welkenraedt might be. It’s a small town nestled in the Ardennes miles from anywhere.

That puzzled me even more as to why the boat trains from Oostende would be going there.
I eventually found the reason. It’s a junction station where lines from Spa and from Eupen come in.

But more importantly, it’s the last station of any importance before the German border. The electricity current in Germany used to be different to that in Belgium, so that was where the Belgian engine came off, and then a German locomotive would be attached to take the train on into Europe.

Alison and I went to Welkenraedt on one of our excursions out back in July to see what was going on. But it was always my ambition, strange though it might seem, to change trains there.

So here I am, on a windswept, soaking wet freezing platform huddled under a tiny shelter at Welkenraedt in the middle of winter waiting for a train to come in.

And no coffee for miles around either

Despite it being Sunday I’d left the alarm connected and at 06:00 it duly rang. No breakfast, no medication, just packing my backpack and then out into the dark, stopping off on the way to take a few photos of around the station area because I had plenty of time..

At 07:24 the train to Eupen came into the station and I leapt aboard. And at Welkenraedt I hopped out. These days the trains don’t go on into Europe but go round to Eupen.

We had to wait for a diesel multiple-unit to come rattling in from Spa.

We didn’t have long to wait until this filthy, dirty disreputable ancient thing came staggering into the station.

Old, covered in grafitti and all kinds of things, and the train was even worse. I’d be ashamed to be seen in something like this, and the idea that the SNCB would be content to send such a machine into a foreign country where it could be compared with the pristine stuff on offer over there is an absurdity to say the least.

But here it was and here I was. So I climbed aboard and rattled off into Germany.

Here I am finally in Germany, in Aachen in fact, at the Hauptbahnhof.

I have to change trains here, and there’s a wait of about 20 minutes for my connection, so there is plenty of time for breakfast.

German bread is probably the best in the world and so a couple of bread rolls of different varieties and a coffee were just what the doctor ordered.

My next train was already in the station. A newish double-decker that put the SNCB offering to shame. This rolled off out of the station, 10 seconds late, and an hour later, I was in Koln.

That was where I took this photograph, by the way.

Interestingly, the announcements on the train were in German followed by English. I imagined what might be the response from the xenophobic racist Brexiters if this kind of cosmopolitanism were ever to happen in the UK.

It’s years since I’ve been to Koln. About 2007 if my memory serves me correctly.

Looking for something to do to pass the time, I’d been idly scanning through the SNCB website and I found that a voyage by train from Leuven to Köln and return would cost me a mere €68:00 – that’s a four-hundred kilometre round trip.

With nothing much happening in Belgium, I decided to come for a day out.

I spent a couple of hours wandering around the city, visiting all of the places that I had visited on my previous trips. But at midday I had to return to the cathedral.

When I was chair of the North European Regional Forum of Open University students, one of the committee members lived here in Koln. And by coincidence she was a big friend of my old friend Liz. Hence the regular visits to Koln. Jackie and I hadn’t seen each other since those days, but she had heard that I was coming to Koln and we were going to meet for lunch.

It was at that moment that the heavens opened. As I picked my way through the crowds I was becoming wetter and wetter, and so I was glad to meet Jackie and go for a coffee.

When the rain eased off a little we headed off into the town and an Italian restaurant. It was a strange place for an Italian restaurant. They wouldn’t do me a plate of vegetables with pasta and tomato sauce. I got the pasta and the tomato sauce, but they couldn’t do the vegetables. That can only mean one thing, as I’m sure that the more astute readers will realise.

By now the rain was coming down even worse, but we headed off regardless. Down the main shopping street and through a couple of the Christmas markets, looking at the products on sale.

We ended up at a hot drinks stall. Jackie had a gluhwein and I had a hot cocktail. The mugs were beautiful so we forewent the deposit and I took them away in my backpack.

Jackie’s partner came down to meet us. They were off to a carol concert at the end of the afternoon so I said goodbye

Now on my own, I retraced my steps back through the markets and down to the River Rhine, thinking that I could have done with a good Rhinecoat.

I walked up along the side of the river and then up the steps to the Hohenzollern Bridge – the huge railway bridge with a pedestrian footpath that straddles the river.

It was a dismal dreary walk in the dark and the rain but even so, it’s good to stand there in mid-stream and watch the fleets of barges and cruise ships passing by underneath.

Eventually I found myself back at the railway station. And to my dismay, the rear of the station has all been cleared up and modernised and the excellent fritkot that I remembered from the past has been swept away.

Nevertheless I did manage to fit myself up with some food. Back inside the station, I found a Thai restaurant in the subterranean shopping gallery that had a range of vegetarian and vegan food.

I had a stir-fry tofu with rice and it was really good.

My train was a few minutes early and already in the platform. To my surprise it was pulled by the same locomotive that had brought me out.

I hopped aboard and grabbed myself a comfortable seat. And here I had an interesting encounter with a German ticket-collector. It had been so wet that the damp atmosphere had caused the ink on my rail ticket to run and he couldn’t read it.

In the end, reason prevailed.

Another wait at Aachen for an even more disreputable Belgian multiple-unit. And which, surprisingly (or maybe not) it was likewise the same one that had brought me out.

There was graffiti all over the inside of the train and rubbish strewn all over the floor. Not a very good advert for the SNCB, sending atrain like this across the border into foreign parts.

And then another wait on the cold and wet at Welkenraedt for my train back to Leuven.

So now, I’m back home, looking and feeling like one more haggard, drowned rat, although I had no idea where I would find one more haggard drowned rat at this time of night.

And straight off to bed because I have the hospital in the morning and I need to be on form.

On my travels today, I took well over 100 photos. Some are in the text and some more below.

But if you want to see the rest, I’ve prepared a web page where you can see them in all their sodding and dripping glory, such as it was.

christmas lights tiensevest leuven louvain belgium

martelarenplein leuven louvain belgium

railway station war memorial martelarenplein leuven louvain belgium

war memorial railway station martelarenplein leuven louvain belgium

war memorial martelarenplein leuven louvain belgium

railway station martelarenplein leuven louvain belgium

train station leuven louvain belgium

hauptbahnhof aachen germany

automotrice sncb 644 653 hauptbahnhof aachen germany

Sunday 9th March 2014 – WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY …

… and I’ve been taking full advantage of it. Not least in the Thermal Spa. And today’s verdict?

The Mudbath – same as yesterday (the mud had worn off during the night)
The Circular Shower – can’t see what this did that three friends with hosepipes couldn’t do (I, of course, don’t have three friends)
The Penetrating Shower – I was worried about this and when she said “lie face-down on the bed”, that did nothing to allay my fears. However it’s a horizontal bar of five or six very fine but high-pressure shower heads all aimed at your back.
In the jacuzzi, a rather large woman jumped in and landed right on my foot.
“I’m so sorry – was that your foot?”
“Yes it was” I replied “but don’t worry – I still have one left”.
I finished it off with a massage today. I was hoping for a young blond nymphette – I ended up with a retired former Soviet discus-thrower.
“I’ll massage your clavicles, shall I?”
“Not while I have my strength you won’t”.

Apart from that, I’ve been out and about again. This is the Chateau of Arques, about 15kms awy from here.

It dates from the aftermath of the Crusade against the Cathars and is said to control an important route used by transhumance farmers as they pass up and down to and from the higher slopes, but looking at its position here and how easily it is overlooked, it’s good that the transhumance farmers didn’t possess any cannon. A few bits of ordnance on the surrounding hills and the castle wouldn’t last long.

As it happens, it was a ruin up until about 120 or so years ago but has since had quite a decent renovation.

From there I went up to the village of Peyrolles. This is another place that features in all of these stories but there was nothing of interest to me.

That is except a plot of land (that wasn’t for sale, unfortunately) that had one of the best views that I have seen for a while – right up the Vallée du Salz past Cardou (on the left) and the ruins of the Chateau de Blanchefort (on the right) almost all the way to Rennes-les-Bains.

The modern road to Rennes-les-Bains is not the original road by any means, as I mentioned the other day.

The original road runs from Serres and goes over the river by this absolutely magnificent packhorse bridge, passing right by the foot of Cardou and then through the village of Montferrand to its final destination.

Now, does this road remind you of anything? It ought to do, because you have seen something similar before.

Do you remember when I wrote my magnum opus about Riccarton Junction back in 2007/2008? We found the road that went down there too and there were not half some striking similarities. It made me feel quite at home, I tell you

But as for Cardou itself, it’s a magnificent, awe-inspiring mountain and you can see why it’s featured so much in the folklore of many of these legends.

Despite the fact that there are dozens of other mountains around, one or two of which are higher that Cardou, it’s nevertheless the dominant feature all the way around here – see it from miles around.

But one or two of the legends of Cardou are not quite so wholesome and healthy. At least two writers have insisted that Jesus is buried somewhere up there in a tunnel and that the rockfall that you see there was engineered to cover the traces of the excavation.

Mind you, neither of these two authors explained in any kind of detail how this rockfall was engineered in the days before controlled explosive. The usual historical way of doing this, by piling the rock on a large wooden platform and then burning the platform, would not have been sufficient to have produced this fall.

But no matter what method they chose, it must surely have been an interesting experience for the watchers at the foot of Cardou.

Now if any place is ever likely to push Rennes-le-Chateau off the top of the pile of places about which more rubbish has been talked than anywhere else on the planet, then it has to be this place.

This is a lieu-dit (or hamlet called) Les Pontils on the road between Serres and Arques and it has a quite eerie claim to fame.

It may not look like much but on that flat platform over there was until 1988 a tomb that has been said by so many people to be the inspiration behind the painting Les Bergers d’Arcadie – “The Shepherds of Arcadia” – by Nicolas Poussin.

If this is so, then it’s a magnificent feat by Poussin seeing as how he painted his oeuvre in the 1630s, and yet all of the evidence available places the building of the tomb to … errr … 1903.

Someone did reply that there was an earlier, identical tomb here that was destroyed on royal orders later in the 17th Century but that begs the questions “how did they know that it was identical?” and “how did they know that this was the spot?” We’re dealing with a period before photography and GPS recording. And no-one as far as I am aware, has produced any kind of evidence to support this story of a royal order.

It’s connected with a phrase “Et In Arcadia Ego” which may people claim is bad Latin (there’s no verb) and hides an anagram or a coded message, but Latin is one of those languages where there is no pronoun (the verb is declined in order to reflect the doer of the action) but Ego is a pronoun and is used for emphasis or else in certain cases when there is no verb. And in that case it is put at the end of the sentence so the phrase would be something like “And I, in Arcadia”. That’s perfectly acceptable to say that in English and the construction is also good Latin.

But if you want a real mystery, one that no-one has picked up, go to the cemetery in Rennes les Bains. We have four main actors in this conspiracy – Saunière of course, his two friends Boudet and Gélis, and his servant girl Denarnaud.

And what do they all have in common? The answer to that is that each one of their families has a tomb in the cemetery at Rennes-les-Bains, although not one of the actors is buried in it.

You could make up a decent conspiracy theory about this too.

But that’s not all that’s exciting in the cemetery either. What about this?

This is a grave belonging to someone called Jean Vié and I bet he’s glad that he’s here because he must have been called some rotten names at school. His name is a phonetic expression of the pronunciation of the name of the month – janvier – January.

Not only that, the way that the date is expressed – 7 bre – is quite common masons’ shorthand for the month of September, but couple that with the emphasis of the date 1 (as in first), you could make up a date of 17 January – and that was a day upon which a lot of things happened during this mystery.

That would make a good conspiracy theory too – totally overlooked by everyone so far.

Our January man is said to be the predecessor to the Abbé Boudet and it is also said that Boudet officiated over his interment – which if he did, his appointment to the church here must have been extremely rapid.

And one thing that should be mentioned is that the January man is buried in the plot right next door to Boudet’s family plot.

Coincidence or what?

-5

Saturday 8th March 2014 – I HAVE DECIDED …

… thatI’ll be staying on in Rennes-les-Bains for a few days. And for several reasons too.
Firstly – There’s so much going on here and in the area
Secondly – I’ve found a cosy little B&B where I’m having good value for money
Thirdly – I don’t have to be home until Tuesday night (and not necessarily then either)

So all in all, it seems like a good plan, even though the town has seen much better days than these days, as you can probably imagine.

This morning, first stop was to see what remained of the Chateau de Blanchefort. These (such as they are) are perched on a mountain top right opposite the legendary Cardou, the mountain that has figured in so much of the conversation around here.

But getting there is by no means easy. Not as exhausting as the climb up to Montségur the other day, but there is just so much of it and the path is in a terrible condition.

Immersed in mud, and the bridges, such as they are, are like this. It’s another one of these walks that is not for the faint-hearted.

The castle was the former home of Bertrand de Blanchefort. He was 4th Grand Master of the Knights Templar, whose period of office was from 1153 to 1170, and this is just about all that I could find of the remains of his castle.

I’ve found nothing that gives me much help about the history of the place, but I imagine that with it being a Templar stronghold, the suppression of that order in the early 14th Century led to its downfall.

It’s not quite all that remains of the castle. I had a good rummage around and found quite a few stones, such as these examples, that have clearly been “dressed”.

I can’t think what else stones such as these might have been used for, if not for part of the interior of the castle. You won’t find stones like these in a goatherd’s hut, unless he’s pinched them from a ruined castle of course.

Right down there at the bottom of the valley, out of the shot unfortunately, is the River Salz and it’s from there (or thereabouts) that I’ve walked.

You can see now why it was that it took me so long to reach here, regardless of the state of the path and the bridhes (such as they are).

Across the river valley on the far bank is a loggers’ road, and that particular road has featured in some of the stories too.

This is a close-up of the famous “Cardou” mountain.

Apparently Jesus is buried in the side of the mountain somewhere. Or was it the Holy Grail? Or perhaps the Ark of the Covenant? I forget now, or maybe I’m becoming confused. But a good number of these tens of thousands of books consider Cardou as playing an important role in whatever mystery there might be in this area.

But leaving all of the conjecture aside, let’s sit for a while right at the top and admire the view.

In case you are wondering about the town over there on that crest, that is of course the famous Rennes-le-Chateau where we were yesterday morning – the place where Bérenger Sauniere made his discoveries that transformed this area from an isolated, abandoned rural backwater into a trendy esoteric tourist venue.

That down there is Coustaussa where we went yesterday afternoon to see the ruins of the castle and also the grave of the Abbé Antoine Gélis who was murdered at the vicarage and whose murder was never solved (no Miss Marple in France of course – she would never have missed out on a Murder at the Vicarage in the UK)

I showed you yesterday a photo of how the Chateau of Coustaussa dominated the valley of the Salz River – so just look at how the Chateau de Blanchefort dominates the Chateau of Coustaussa

This afternoon, it was Open Day at the Spa. Three “goes” for just €18:00 – makes a mockery of the €50-odd for a shower at Neris-les Bains.

I wasn’t going to miss out on that, and so here’s my report of the afternoon’s visit –
The therapeutic shower – like being stuck up against a wall by someone armed with a Kärcher
The aerobath – last time I had an experience like this was when mum put all five of us kids in the bath together after we had had baked beans on toast for tea.
The mudbath – nice, hot and gooey. Has done wonders for my skin and according to my landlady here at my little B&B makes me look 10 years younger – as long as I don’t have a shower and wash it off!

I followed that with an hour in the sauna and jacuzzi for just €3:00 and after all of today’s activities I feel like a new man. Yes, I’m fed up of the old one.

Tea was interesting. No restaurant here in the town and so, remembering that I had the camping gear (not that I intend to do any camping) in the back of Caliburn, I went and cooked some pasta and tinned ratatouille.

I’m totally whacked too and so I’m going to have what remains of an early night.

-4

Saturday 7th November 2009 – I almost did something today …

… that I haven’t done for over 10 years. That is – I went to the swimming baths for a swim. I’d done my monthly shop around Montlucon with plenty of time to spare and on the way back I stopped off at Neris-les-Bains where there is a public swimming baths. I’ve been there before during last winter to take my showers there but I really fancied a swim. And I always carry a holdall in the van with some washing stuff, some clean undies, a towel and a pair of trunks.

And of course, as you might expect, it was closed for the week for pool cleaning.

Neris is an old Roman spa town. It’s quite pretty and genteel – the kind of place that you would take your maiden aunt for afternoon tea. There’s a thermal baths there – something along the lines of Malvern – where you can go for a relaxing cure. It’s pretty good for the stress, so they say. So I wandered along to see if they could fix me up with a shower or something, seeing as I was here.

“Actually, we are closing today” said the receptionist.
“When are you reopening?”
“The 27th of March” she replied. You can see that it was my lucky day.
“Can I come without an appointment for a shower or a bath without signing up for a cure?”
“Certainly“
“So how much would that cost?”
And when she told me the price, I needed to sign up for a cure in order to recover from the shock. Prices start at €53:00. And here I am, complaining about €2:90 for a shower!

She gave me a leaflet with all of the details of the cures that are on offer. One of the things that they propose is a mudbath. Dunno why anyone would expect me to sign up for that – with all of the rain that we have had these last few days I have my own private mudbath just outside the front door. Admittedly it doesn’t have marble walls and floozies handing round the towels, but it doesn’t cost … gulp … €334 either.

Mind you, I do recall the time that I sent Nerina to have a mudpack applied to her face. They reckoned it would improve her appearance.
“Has it worked?” she asked when she came back
“Absolutely” I replied, “but it’s all worn off now“
Mind you, she enjoyed herself while she was having a weekend at this spa. She phoned me up to say that with all the treatments she had had, she was feeling like a new woman.
“So am I” I replied

This evening I went down to Pionsat to watch the 3rd XI play Thuret, but the ground was totally in darkness. You can see that it was my lucky day today! From the top of the hill just round the corner from me I can see right across the valley and I noticed that the floodlights were on at Marcillat’s ground, about 12 km from here so I drove over there instead. Some of Pionsat’s players were there watching Marcillat play Montvicq and they told me that the match had been rearranged for last week and the team had actually won! And I missed it too!

Marcillat play in Allier’s 2nd Division. That’s the same level as Pionsat’s 2nd XI, but the quality of football was probably lower 3rd Division based on Puy-de-Dome standards. Pretty much agricultural stuff. Marcillat won 5-1 (Montvicq’s goal was a Marcillat “own goal”) without breaking sweat, and I don’t think that Montvicq would score if they were still playing now with Marcillat having been off the pitch for the last two hours.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m going to watch the 1st XI at Artonne – I’ve never been there for a match. And that reminds me. I was in Brico Depot today and one of the assistants came over and started chatting to me quite socially.
“Who on earth is this?” I asked myself.
Anyway, after a lengthy discussion he asked “are you coming to watch us tomorrow?” Ahh yes. Pionsat footballer. What with Pionsat FC pie hut attendants working at the Auchan and footballers working at Brico Depot, I can see that I’m going to have to be on my best behaviour everywhere that I go. That’ll be quite a change.

+10

-10

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: spa

Sunday 23rd December 2018 – SO THAT’S ANOTHER .

Sunday 9th March 2014 – WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY …

Saturday 8th March 2014 – I HAVE DECIDED …

Saturday 7th November 2009 – I almost did something today …

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