A relaxing drive with Dora

Friday 10^th June

Today has been a quiet and fairly relaxed day. Rob started out the day with a walk around the neighbourhood of the hotel. He saw some interesting sculptures along the way and a woodpecker doing what woodpeckers do. Our hotel was in a lovely country setting and would be relaxing to spend a few days here and enjoy their gardens.

Some of the chateaus we see are just amazing. This one has been turned into a  health spa. In its previous life it was a convent.

Something for my Shepparton friends.

A couple of other interesting sculptures. This egg rotated and the colours changed in the light.

We only had 150k to travel and decided just to let Dora take us the shortest route. It was good to leave the motorways and freeways and travel along some quieter roads. The freeways in the Netherlands are certainly something. They are wide and very good surfaces for the most part. It is sometimes hard to keep track of the allowed speed and it is a pain when trucks pass each other because the whole of the fast lane is held up, but you get none of the tooting and gesturing that you see in Melbourne. When it comes to freeway interchanges you need both sets of eyes on the road and the gps. They can be really complicated. I thought the states had it for spaghetti junctions but the Netherlands will give it a run for its money.

Our number one task for the day was to find somewhere to do the washing. We decided the town of Namur was a likely spot and a couple of goes around the town we spotted a laundromat. There was a sandwicherie over the road where we had a coffee and then after the washing was done went back there for spaghetti bolognaise for lunch which cost under 10euro for both.

It was time to move on to Charleroi where we are staying tonight but before going there we took a little detour to a signposted place with a museum to Napoleon. This took a couple of goes to find but was a really good museum explaining the battle for Ligny. This battle took place June 16^th 1815 which was 2 days before the battle of Waterloo (Ligny is probably 20-30k south of Waterloo). We also spotted a photo op of a chateau.

Spotted this lovely chateau....

...had to be owned by a plumber or a doctor. Hand surgeon and the car park was reserved for clients so I guess he saw patients at the chateau.

We were able to pick up the musket and a pistol. They are so heavy. I'd have no chance of holding it up long enough to aim.

Dora got a bit frustrated when we kept diverting from her route and was keen to get us back on track via any goat track on her radar. It can be quite interesting to try shortest route that takes you away from the main roads.

Hotel tonight falls into the cheapie chain variety. Quite adequate and the right price. We headed into the city for dinner and walked twice round the block checking every place for menu and price. This is often the hardest part of every day. At least next week we are in a gite so can shop and cook our own food and save the hassle.