Tuesday 18th July 2017 – Hamoir, Belgium

Soon after we started our journey today we saw something that we haven’t seen during the whole sojourn, serious hills. The scenery was almost alpine, with deep valleys and steep, high, wooded hillsides but without the peaks. We followed the minor B255 road down to the E35 motorway before changing to the E44 to cross the Rhine above Koblenz. Finally we took the E45 north and fell off the end near Prum. All of that motorway driving was trouble free. We didn’t go through any major urban areas, there was little traffic, the scenery was lovely and the driving was easy – ideal. Stopping for a late lunch at a convenient picnic spot with a good view, we opened up all windows in the van. At nearly 30°C, it was too hot to sit in the sun at the picnic table provided. The scenery was less dramatic now as we headed for the Belgium border, through a German speaking part of Belgium to the aire at Malmedy. Just a few miles from Malmedy, we came to a roadblock. We have come across many planned closed roads on this holiday and there was always a signed diversion. This time however, there was obviously an incident and it was the police who had closed the road, without any signed diversion. We headed off on many very minor rural roads, having to go onto the verge whenever a car came the other way. This is where the satnav comes into its own and we gradually made our way back to the main road just where a policeman was stopping cars at the other end of the road closure. When we arrived at Malmedy, we discovered that there wasn’t an aire! Our aire guide that covers Germany and Belgium is from 2011 and we knew that we ran the risk of finding an aire closed. In this case, they had built a whole row of shops at the old railway station where the aire used to be. There weren’t many options nearby but Hamoir was in the direction that we would be travelling tomorrow and was only 50 minutes away, so we headed there. After a false alarm when we thought that we had another fair in the parking place, we found the very large aire by the tennis courts, next to the river with good dumping and water facilities. We were very happy to pay the €8 fee for 24 hours. The temperature had dropped to 28°C, we were frazzled and didn’t fancy cooking, heating the van up even more. What’s more, we really liked the idea of a nice Belgium meal. We found a restaurant with a fixed menu for €35 and it was extremely good. At the end of three course and excellent house wine, we were stuffed! We had eaten at an outside table and it was still very warm. We returned to a very hot Henrietta, despite having parked her under the shade of a tree.

Photos: A stretch of the river Ourthe in Hamoir close to the aire; Presentation is half the art – they looked lovely and tasted great – Jane’s melon and Palma ham with sorbet and eau de vie and my goat’s cheese with apple and lardons.