Three Countries in Three Days – Hello Namur

Iggy the Hymer motorhome has found a lovely overnight spot on the banks of the Meuse river in Namur, Belgium.( N50.44900, E4.85972) Our third country in three days. Already Scotland seems a long, long time ago!

We left Breda bright and early on Tuesday morning for the two hour drive through Belgium to Namur.  Well it would have been two hours if not for the rush hour traffic outside Antwerp and Brussels!  Still it wasn’t too bad – for Belgium!  Belgian roads are often heavily congested and not in the best of condition as a result.  But we still managed to arrive in Namur just after 10 a.m.  Result!

A quick peek on Google had shown an interesting looking Citadel and a pretty riverside town. It hadn’t looked too spectacular, but seemed a decent enough spot to spend a day.

We soon found out that, in person, Namur is much more impressive than the few photos I had seen.  It’s a truly lovely spot and a place I would definitely be happy to return to for a leisurely couple of days.  When we’re not busy racing snow clouds to Sicily that is!

Just ten minutes walk from Iggy’s stopover spot was the ascent to the Citadel. 

I say the ascent!  Our intrepid team huffed and puffed ourselves skywards for an eternity.  Under ever present threat of imminent heart attack or plunging to our deaths over the precipitous edges of the path.  Every summit led to another until we heaved our “Really need to get fit!” bodies into the huge open space of the old sports arena at the top of the path.

Of course after we’d spent a couple of hours wandering around the citadel we found there were, in fact, many different paths to the top.  We, in our ignorance, had apparently taken the one for super hikers!  Go team Travel Malarkey !!

The Citadel was great fun, and we really enjoyed wandering around it.  Completely free to roam as well.  Always a bonus for our shrinking wallets.  As the afternoon wore on though the strengthening cold started to get to us. 

Even with gloves and scarves on it was becoming more painful than fun up on the heights of the fascinating fortress. It was definitely time to descend and explore the town. No matter how much I wanted to see the remaining nooks and crannies I’d not yet poked my cold, red nose into.

We made our way over the bridge and into town to explore.  It had been enticing us for hours from our vantage point, high on the Citadel walls. And first impressions were that it would be a lovely spot to explore. If we could just endure the cold an hour or two longer!

But alas for our plans! A few hundred yards over the bridge and we were stopped dead in our tracks. The wonderfuly rich, warm smells of rotisserie chicken were wafting through the frozen air outside a boucherie.  Our legs were aching.  Our fingers slightly numb.  Our bellies starting to rumble. This smell was too much to take! 

Five minutes and 7.50 Euro later we emerged from the cosiness of the shop into the bright, sharp Belgian winter air.  Clutching our wonderfully aromatic chicken, complete with hot chilli and olive sauce and fresh French bread we scurried back along the Meuse to Iggy.  The town would have to wait for another trip!

The rest of our time in Namur kind of followed naturally from that purchase.  We rushed back along the river to Iggy trying to keep our precious cargo warm! The cold was getting more bitter by the minute, and our thighs were growing numb from it. Making it harder to keep our speed up.

What seemed like an hour later, but was really just five minutes we fell through the door into Iggy’s lovely warm interior. Thank goodness for wonderful Hymers and our brilliant, gas run (LPG), blown air heating. It’s just the best thing ever to take a nice warm home with you when you go exploring!

What followed after that was a lot of munching.  And licking of fingers to outdo any over salted KFC any day of the week!  Add in nice warm Iggy and a movie and it wasn’t long before our eyelids began to droop.  Day three had been a good one we decided, as we slid off into our waiting bed for a few, well earned…  zzzzzz….