We have been looking forward for some time to this trip out on “Jess” the van, it’s been a busy few months so we are looking forward to a break away from everything, home, work and of course the UK politics. Jess has been cleaned inside and out and stocked up ready for the off.
Here is our first 5 days of our journey. See the maps for more details
Friday 20th Sept 2019
What we have been doing is using the local campsite behind our house,
Saturday 21st Sept 2019
Today is the real starting day for the holiday, we will do the drive to Dover, firstly with a short jump from Fishbourne to Portsmouth. As we hoped, an uneventful day. W
Sunday 22nd Sept 2019
The good weather didn’t last. We woke up to a broken blue sky of grey heavy clouds. After a long breakfast, we set off early for Dover as we have been told that there are demonstrations by Extinction Rebellion on the A20 and at the port so we best get there sharpish. Just a quick note on these van breakfasts, we love them. The best part of the day. It goes on for ages, probably an hour and a half of preparing, eating and wittering. A great way to start the day. This never happens at home. We set off,
As it’s Belgium we get into the spirit of it all quite quick on the ferry and enjoy a hot coffee with a
We are staying at the Stal t’ Bardehof We have stayed here before and we love it. Being in Belgium we thought that we should get into some of this Trappist beer carry on, as it’s so famous. By all accounts, 6 Trappists beers come from Belgium. Even though there are hundreds of Belgian beers only 6 are brewed by Trappist monks, the rest are ‘
Dinner was a bit of a disaster as we discovered, to our disappointment, that a
Monday 23rd September
After our usual leisurely breakfast, we discuss where to go today. It transpires that Belgium has a fine collection of boat lifts. Interesting. These are not a simple or copied versions of the Anderton lift in the UK oh no these are BIG, massive and quite something to see when you get close to them. We find three that we can go and look at. So off we go to Thieu to a free
Happy with our little adventure in Belgian boat lifts we felt that it was time to sample more Belgian beer. After walking for what seemed ages and miles we found a bar/restaurant on a roundabout and entered. Yes, they had 2 of the 6 Trappist beers here, Rochefort and Orval. We get one of each and once again
Tuesday 24th September
Time to take a look at the next one. This is the second tallest boat lift in the world but only recently, the Chinese have now built and opened the tallest. This one can haul a boat in a box of water up to 70m. In the town of
There is one more to see to finish off the boat lift tour. The Incide Plain at Ronquieres. This one is madder than the other two… A 5,200T counterweight is set against a box of water with… yes a boat inside only this time its pulled up an incline of about 1.5km over a height of 68m. Crazy but to watch is just amazing that people come up with these ideas and make them work. Who want’s to go to the moon…?
All in all an interesting day. We loved it anyway. If you want to know more about the canals in Belgium and the 4 boat lifts then check out this site. Great stuff…
It’s a Sunday night in the middle of the Black Forest, Germany and we have just finished recalling the first part of week 1. We’ll get the rest done tomorrow and we’ll be upto date.
enjoy the beer and the waffles………
don’t get stuck in the lifts!