Back into the whirlwind

I came back to Brussels in the wee hours of Saturday, after a 11 hour trip from Cork via Shannon and Charleroi. It is not easy to get out of Ireland.

Blonds arrived later on Saturday, and it was lovely to catch up.

Sunday, however was a ball. It is nice to have a friend who can make disasters into fun! We got up at crack of dawn to go canoeing on the Lesse, in Luxembourg province. This was because the website appeared to say that the last time to leave was just before 11, and that you needed to book tickets 30mins in advance. We had consulted the ticket office and our journey there by train would take 2h20.

We changed at Libramont, as the guard said, but not as the website said (we thought there might be a problem with the trains and followed his advice) for Bertrix. What we did not factor in was that coming in the other direction (and I admit that I could have read the instructions more carefully) Bertrix was not where we wanted to go, but the other end of the line. So we had an hour in Bertrix, with coffee and cecemel, a place we shall never visit again and would never have visited otherwise.

Eventually, after 4 hours, we got to our station, and found the canoeing was still open. We spent a glorious (and inexpensive) 3 hours of more on the Lesse, occasionally hitting the bank, trying to prove that we were stronger than in reality, in bright sunshine. The valley is gorgeous, wooded and with an extraordinary chateau up a cliff half way down.

At the end we showered, only to find that all of our clean, dry clothes, were now soaked with river water. We rinsed and put on wet clothes (thank heavens it was sunny) and waited for the train. We then realised that with the next train in over 1 1/2 hours (something we hadn't bargained for) there was no way we would even make the 8pm Sunday Mass.

We strolled towards the village church, thinking that we could at least make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, and kicking ourselves for not going to the vigil Mass on Saturday- it had seemed a bit odd to go to Mass twice in one day. Lo and behold, a list of local Masses, including one at 6pm.

With our limited funds, we could have got a taxi (although it would have meant no dinner) and went to enquire, only to find that it was 30 minutes walk away. That little bit of us offering to forego dinner for Mass was returned to us 100fold by God, who took us up to Dinant, a beautiful, wonderful town, where we attended a lovely Mass, had a delicious dinner in the evening sunlight and then travelled by train (and it only took us 1 1/2 hours this time?!?!?) up the delightful Meuse valley to Namur and on to Brussels.

I wish I could do it EVERY weekend!