Seeking out stories in Belgium

I'm a bit late with my blog again this week, for which I apologise. I'm finding it difficult to keep up with everything I want to do alongside my work and my own writing has been suffering as a result. I've got so many DIY jobs to sort out I'm having to keep a list. Yes, me. I never keep lists, but this one's on the fridge so I can't lose it. There are admin jobs to do as well, which I've been putting off, but won't be able to do so for much longer. Mr Taxman waits for no man, or in my case, woman.

But having said that, we did make a brief escape last weekend. For just one lovely day on Saturday, the sun shone for most of the day albeit with a biting cold wind. I think you can even see the clouds moving in my photo below. It was very chilly, but lovely to get out. We did a brief incursion across the border into Belgium where we found a lovely walk along an old railway line. These were the views we saw.

Once the wind got too cold, we escaped back into the car and went for a drive ending up in the border town of Assenede. I was about to say it's a village, but I'm not sure that would be correct. It's actually quite large and seems to go on forever, but right near the centre, we found this fascinating corner.

The photo above shows the sign marking what used to be an old harbour. There's nothing there now and the waterway has long gone, but Assenede used to have a small but busy port on a waterway called the Braakmanbaai. The sign below tells us that the harbour allowed flat-bottomed boats almost into the centre of Assenede where they could load and offload. However, it was already out of use in the 16th century due to silting. I think it's remarkable that the sign and information are still kept here. A nice piece of history that captured my imagination. Apparently there's a stream running through the middle of the old harbour channel, but we didn't see any sign of it.

Another interesting snippet from Assenede, and this time a more quirky one, is told by these two photos below. The odd sculpture of a man eating a stone derives from the story in the sign, which tells us that several centuries ago, the people of Assenede spent what was considered to be a wasteful amount of money on having their village street paved with stone. This expense came back to bite them when during a crisis (probably a famine) in the 19th century, the residents of the village were starving and had no money to buy food. The story goes that the people of the surrounding villages mocked the good folk of Assenede by saying they'd have to eat stones instead; hence the rather alarming looking sculpture. It seems a bit unfair on them really given that it was probably their forebears who committed the costly folly.

It's amazing what we find in these out of the way places, isn't it? Incidentally, just behind our stone-eating man is a bollen pitch, which is a kind of bowles. At the moment it's covered in a protective tarpaulin, but when the warmer weather comes, we'll be able to see the older folk of the village playing their traditional game here too.

This last photo is of the track that runs along the edge of the old harbour. It's private property, but I rather liked the collection of red brick buildings at the back there.

Altogether, it was a lovely uitje as the Dutch might call it, and it did us good to do something different for a change. Hopefully, there'll be more of these excursions in the weeks to come, weather permitting.

Enjoy the rest of your week allemaal, and I'll be back to catch up with you all soon.