It felt like a
good day to go to Belgium today, a flatter and much less challenging version of
Mallory’s “because it’s there.” Nevertheless, I donned my urban strolling
equivalent of tweed trousers and a corduroy jacket (long shorts and a
sleeveless top, plus running shoes), went through the front door and turned
right. That was about it in terms of route-finding: all I needed to do was keep
going until I crossed the border. There are other bits of Belgium which are
closer, if you could go direct, but the roads seem to get close,
then wimp out, running parallel with the border before
plucking up courage and going across.
I know the
first mile or so. There’s an interesting church and some houses with unusual
tiling but otherwise nothing special. I’m relieved to see that it’s market day
in St Saulve: it’ll distract me from the road for a while. As I walk along the
line of stalls, I hear the usual “Bonjour, madame” from a vendor trying to
attract my attention. He succeeds when it’s followed by “Good morning.” It’s
one of our usual suppliers, known in our family as Le Prof because he helps me with pronunciation wrong. Another regular is there too. He’s privately called Eeyore, a
reference to his usual air of gloom, though we suspect that this is a façade.
He catches my eye, looks questioningly and I tell him what I’m doing. He tells
me it’s quite a long way. Maybe I should have looked at the map more closely.

More houses,
mostly redbrick, terraces with no gardens. The shops are
nearly all closed. The thought of lunch is like the light at the end of the
tunnel, the carrot on the stick: I have in mind a lunch of moules frites with a beer in a pavement café in a square, warmed by the sun but shaded by a parasol.
Nearer the motorway, there are views of fields in the distance, then one
field of maize next to the road but not much else. Another maize field appears
and as I look, I have a glimpse of something bright orange: a field planted
with vivid orange marigolds. It’s lovely and is one of the last fields I see
before I finally reach Quievrechain.
Golden arches
tell me that the town is two minutes away, though I guess that’s as the car
drives but eventually I see “Bienvenue a Quievrechain” and know I’m there. All
I need to do is continue until I reach the Belgian side of town, across a
river.
I walk on, then
realise that the shop across the road is called “Le Premier Magasin Belge,” the one next to it is a tabac with a painted Belgian flag, there is a Coiffure de la frontière and I
am, it seems in the Belgian town of Quievrain.
I go back to find the border.
There it is: a small river just over a metre wide. I must have blinked.
Most of the
stores seem to be tabacs. Some sell
beer to take out as well as serving it at the bar and they all sell cigarettes
– lots of them, in large quantities (bucket of fags, anyone?). There is a large
beer-and –tobacco store so I go and look for my favourite beer. I buy that and a couple of others as a souvenir of my trip to another country. The
cost is 4.48€, including ten cents deposit on each bottle, just under £4.
It’s lunchtime and I’m hungry. I look for my pavement cafe but the only food
on offer seems to be pizza so I cross the road and turn back
towards France, looking in the shop windows as I go. There is a mind-boggling
display of ash-trays, shisha pipes, bongs and buckets of cigarettes. I find the Café de Paris, eat, relax and
then, eventually, find the bus stop.
By the time I
get home, I’ve walked about ten miles and am feeling tired: it's about twice as far as I've walked for quite a while. I have time to reflect upon the day: not the most exciting walk in any way but I've saved myself a lot of research time
if I ever want to have a life which revolves around drinking beer, cigarettes
and drugs.
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Yet another pretty roundabout. |
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