Where's Bertie? He's in the motorhome parking area of a large car park in Tournai (exact location:50.60387, 3.38107)
Weather: Mainly sunny and nice and warm when in the sun.
Mont Saint Aubert (MSA) became a late addition to our itinerary this morning, as I lay in bed browsing Park4Night. Bertie laboured his way up the hill (a whole 147m above sea level) then had to breathe in to fit down the lane to access the car park. The other nearby car park, would (as we later discovered) have been much easier to access.
MSA offers two things: far-reaching views (if the air clarity isn't too hazy - as it was for us today); and numerous trails, categorised for walking, biking and horse riding. What MSA doesn't seem to offer is any displayed information as to the details of those routes; most of the information we gleaned came from passing marker posts like these:
Not knowing where any of the trails went, we didn't follow one in its entirety, instead taking a route I had downloaded from Wikiloc. It took us via the church, which sits atop the hill...
I could only fit it in frame by putting it on the diagonal. Tilt your head at a jaunty angle and it should look fine.
...then downhill to loop around to reascend, all through pleasant green countryside and woodland.
We could have stayed put in our car park in MSA, and would no doubt have had a silent night there, but instead we opted to veer back towards the plan we put together the other day, and spend the afternoon in Tournai.
Initial impressions weren't great, partly as the Aire here contains three old, dilapidated vans (one of which is, naughtily, a caravan) that seem to have taken up residence, and partly as the Aire is housed in the corner or a large and not-well-presented car park (which it turns out is also a truck-stop at night).
Fortunately, impressions improved remarkably when we walked the five minutes into town. Tournai is by far the nicest place we've visited on this trip.
We started with the cathedral, which is still covered in scaffolding, inside and out, even though our guide book says the repair and restoration work was due to complete in 2016; there was no sign of any work going on today.
Taken from the main square (which is triangular), looking towards the tower
We found the river too
In passing out of the region of Flanders, and into Wallonia, the official language has changed from Dutch to French, but many (if not most) businesses still opt for English on their signs.
Weather: Mainly sunny and nice and warm when in the sun.
Mont Saint Aubert (MSA) became a late addition to our itinerary this morning, as I lay in bed browsing Park4Night. Bertie laboured his way up the hill (a whole 147m above sea level) then had to breathe in to fit down the lane to access the car park. The other nearby car park, would (as we later discovered) have been much easier to access.
MSA offers two things: far-reaching views (if the air clarity isn't too hazy - as it was for us today); and numerous trails, categorised for walking, biking and horse riding. What MSA doesn't seem to offer is any displayed information as to the details of those routes; most of the information we gleaned came from passing marker posts like these:
Not knowing where any of the trails went, we didn't follow one in its entirety, instead taking a route I had downloaded from Wikiloc. It took us via the church, which sits atop the hill...
I could only fit it in frame by putting it on the diagonal. Tilt your head at a jaunty angle and it should look fine.
...then downhill to loop around to reascend, all through pleasant green countryside and woodland.
We could have stayed put in our car park in MSA, and would no doubt have had a silent night there, but instead we opted to veer back towards the plan we put together the other day, and spend the afternoon in Tournai.
Initial impressions weren't great, partly as the Aire here contains three old, dilapidated vans (one of which is, naughtily, a caravan) that seem to have taken up residence, and partly as the Aire is housed in the corner or a large and not-well-presented car park (which it turns out is also a truck-stop at night).
Fortunately, impressions improved remarkably when we walked the five minutes into town. Tournai is by far the nicest place we've visited on this trip.
We started with the cathedral, which is still covered in scaffolding, inside and out, even though our guide book says the repair and restoration work was due to complete in 2016; there was no sign of any work going on today.
Taken from the main square (which is triangular), looking towards the tower
We found the river too
In passing out of the region of Flanders, and into Wallonia, the official language has changed from Dutch to French, but many (if not most) businesses still opt for English on their signs.
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