Where's Bertie? He's in a small Aire just on the very edge of the town of Saint-Hubert, which is in the Belgian province of Luxemburg, not to be confused with the country of Luxemburg, which is just next door. (exact location: 50.02718, 5.38098)
Weather: A bit of a murky start, overcast all day and heavy-ish rain from 4pm.
I had wondered, as we walked various sections of the old and new canals around Thieu over the last couple of days, whether it was feasible to form a circuit using both waterways. I answered that question this morning when I ran west out of the motorhome parking area, along the new canal. After a mile or so I could see that the old canal was not far distant to my left, and a short while later I was able to take a path that joined the two. Passing a man walking along the track holding a dead frog gingerly by its back leg (bizarre!), I completed the loop, then added on a lollipop stick, so as to increase the distance to something over 3 miles.
The red line of my route is so thick that you can barely see the marking of the narrow old canal on the map, but I was running right along the side of the waterway, honest!
Back at Bertie I handed over the baton to Mick, who repeated my route, then after showers and breakfast it was time to make a move eastwards.
I had three possible destinations for today and the one I selected was Saint-Hubert. The obvious way of getting here was via motorway for all but the last 15 minutes of the 1hr45 journey, but as the N4 road is shown on our road atlas as a scenic route, and as it isn't much (if any) further than the motorway route, I thought we'd go that way instead. There ensued a period of driving a roller-coaster as the road ran crossways to a large series of valleys, and feeling like we were driving across an old-fashioned draining board, such was the corrugation of the road surface. As for the surroundings, they might have been pleasant if it hadn't been so misty and murky, but they didn't look to be anything special. Hey ho, you can't win them all!
Arriving in Saint-Hubert, things looked more promising...
The view from Bertie. As I stepped out of his door I was hit by the glorious scent of the wild roses that are planted around the Aire.
...and we intended to find out more about the area with a stroll around the town followed by a 10km walking circuit to the NE of the town. That plan persisted until I looked at the weather forecast, as my suspicions of rain had been aroused by a certain greyness and heaviness in the air.
Thunder storms all afternoon, into the evening and overnight, it said, which didn't sound like the best sort of weather for enjoying a walk in a new area. Thus our plan was shortened to just 'let's see how much of the town we can cover before it rains'.
Only a couple of minutes down the road we thought we were on to a real winner with this town. To our left were the sturdy walls of the large cemetary, and ahead of us stood an old town gate and beyond it a big church:
Interesting design
No weeing in the corners, nor in a number of other corners and alleyways in the town
The inside of the church was disappointing, although probably only because there's currently a faux-ceiling of fabric, presumably because of works being carried out on the stonework above.
With another magnificent building sitting beside the church (we know not what, there wasn't any information about it), we continued to be impressed by the town, but it turned out that we happened to have entered at its most interesting point, which had set our expectations too high. Everything else was pleasant but, save for the buildings of the old Abbey, there was little else to provoke a 'gosh!' or an 'ooh!''.
The information signs dotted around would have lifted our visit, but they were only in French and whilst I do have a grasp of the language, I was struggling to make out what these were trying to convey. Either I've got rusty, or Belgian French is a little different, or these were written in a complicated way. Alas, the Tourist Office wasn't able to help either, having no information at all in English (the lady did give me some information in German, so I assume that I speak French like a German person!).
So, a nice and interesting wander was had, but not as fulfilling as it would have been if we could have gleaned a bit more information about the history of the place.
Wandering back in the direction of Bertie, the sky was looking a bit brighter and I opined that maybe we should have gone for the walk, as it looked like the rain was going to miss us. I'm now glad we hadn't; the current sound of drumming on Bertie's roof, does not sound conducive to a pleasant walk, although I reckon it would have only hit us for the last half hour of our outing, if we had gone for it.
If the forecast holds true, this is going to persist into tomorrow morning, so we'll have to make a decision whether to wait it out or move on.
Weather: A bit of a murky start, overcast all day and heavy-ish rain from 4pm.
I had wondered, as we walked various sections of the old and new canals around Thieu over the last couple of days, whether it was feasible to form a circuit using both waterways. I answered that question this morning when I ran west out of the motorhome parking area, along the new canal. After a mile or so I could see that the old canal was not far distant to my left, and a short while later I was able to take a path that joined the two. Passing a man walking along the track holding a dead frog gingerly by its back leg (bizarre!), I completed the loop, then added on a lollipop stick, so as to increase the distance to something over 3 miles.
The red line of my route is so thick that you can barely see the marking of the narrow old canal on the map, but I was running right along the side of the waterway, honest!
Back at Bertie I handed over the baton to Mick, who repeated my route, then after showers and breakfast it was time to make a move eastwards.
I had three possible destinations for today and the one I selected was Saint-Hubert. The obvious way of getting here was via motorway for all but the last 15 minutes of the 1hr45 journey, but as the N4 road is shown on our road atlas as a scenic route, and as it isn't much (if any) further than the motorway route, I thought we'd go that way instead. There ensued a period of driving a roller-coaster as the road ran crossways to a large series of valleys, and feeling like we were driving across an old-fashioned draining board, such was the corrugation of the road surface. As for the surroundings, they might have been pleasant if it hadn't been so misty and murky, but they didn't look to be anything special. Hey ho, you can't win them all!
Arriving in Saint-Hubert, things looked more promising...
The view from Bertie. As I stepped out of his door I was hit by the glorious scent of the wild roses that are planted around the Aire.
...and we intended to find out more about the area with a stroll around the town followed by a 10km walking circuit to the NE of the town. That plan persisted until I looked at the weather forecast, as my suspicions of rain had been aroused by a certain greyness and heaviness in the air.
Thunder storms all afternoon, into the evening and overnight, it said, which didn't sound like the best sort of weather for enjoying a walk in a new area. Thus our plan was shortened to just 'let's see how much of the town we can cover before it rains'.
Only a couple of minutes down the road we thought we were on to a real winner with this town. To our left were the sturdy walls of the large cemetary, and ahead of us stood an old town gate and beyond it a big church:
Interesting design
No weeing in the corners, nor in a number of other corners and alleyways in the town
The inside of the church was disappointing, although probably only because there's currently a faux-ceiling of fabric, presumably because of works being carried out on the stonework above.
With another magnificent building sitting beside the church (we know not what, there wasn't any information about it), we continued to be impressed by the town, but it turned out that we happened to have entered at its most interesting point, which had set our expectations too high. Everything else was pleasant but, save for the buildings of the old Abbey, there was little else to provoke a 'gosh!' or an 'ooh!''.
The information signs dotted around would have lifted our visit, but they were only in French and whilst I do have a grasp of the language, I was struggling to make out what these were trying to convey. Either I've got rusty, or Belgian French is a little different, or these were written in a complicated way. Alas, the Tourist Office wasn't able to help either, having no information at all in English (the lady did give me some information in German, so I assume that I speak French like a German person!).
So, a nice and interesting wander was had, but not as fulfilling as it would have been if we could have gleaned a bit more information about the history of the place.
Wandering back in the direction of Bertie, the sky was looking a bit brighter and I opined that maybe we should have gone for the walk, as it looked like the rain was going to miss us. I'm now glad we hadn't; the current sound of drumming on Bertie's roof, does not sound conducive to a pleasant walk, although I reckon it would have only hit us for the last half hour of our outing, if we had gone for it.
If the forecast holds true, this is going to persist into tomorrow morning, so we'll have to make a decision whether to wait it out or move on.
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