Scherpenheuvel to Liege

Tuesday 24 April
Walked on farm tracks as far as Diest. Met a local couple in training for a hike to Santiago di Compostella. Suddenly appeared in the outskirts of Diest and there was a McDonalds. Stopped for a coffee which came with a biscuit but no Avocaat. Continued through farmland and forest under a cloudy sky. Took a long short cut and got lost in the woods, again. Found my way out and asked for directions. "Turn right at the church. You can't miss it." They always say that. Could I find the church? I got out my compass and tapped it until it pointed where I thought I ought to go and marched off. Horses everywhere; must be a prosperous area. Suddenly surprised by sunshine. Unzipped my coat for the first time on this trip. Met a gorgeous blonde. A Hofflinger apparently.

Feet savagely attacked by a combined team from Savak, Stasi and Gestapo. Hobbled into my hotel like an old man. Long bath and then a visit to Il Giardino - a taste of Italy for crap canneloni straight from the microwave. I should have been warned when the waitress said, "You don't have to eat, you can just have a drink if you like." Have been walking too much. 166 km since Bergen op Zoom. I booked a place just 14km down the track for the next day.

Wednesday 25 April

Taking it easy today. 15km stroll to Bolderberg and the Hotel Savarin. 50 euros. Manager of the Diest hotel pointed me in the right direction. "Turn right at the castle. You can't miss it." Must have been a very small castle because I did miss it.

 However, even I could not miss the Albert Canal and walked happily on. I was planning to take a short cut into town but fell in with a friendly local and continued on the GR5 through woods. He told me the Douglas firs scattered among the birch and oak were planted by miners who favoured them for pit props because they make an audible creak before breaking. The mines brought in migrants from Turkey, Morocco and elsewhere who intermarried with the local girls and are now assimilated. Mines closed years ago. "You can eat all the mushrooms in these woods. Some only once." The woods are owned by Baron Vogelsang. Nice name - Baron Birdsong. Feet hurt less when walking in company.

Hotel overlooked the town roundabout which was not much used, Bolderberg consisting of one shop, one church and half a dozen cafes. Was royally entertained in a cafe by a semi-retired nurse. 50 years old, working 12 days a month on full pay.

Thursday 26 April

7 hours, 22 km to Oase Hotel in Langerlo. The breakfast waitress lent me her notebook so I could fire off an email. Then disaster! No beanie! Called in at yesterday's cafe. There it was hanging on the hatrack. Local enjoying a breakfast beer suggested I take the smart black homburg hanging next to it. Grateful for the beanie: the walk along the canal was freezing. Huge barges, sometimes two of each a hundred metres long joined together.  And there was a bargewoman in clogs! Heavily industrialised after an hour or two - Gent. Factories and refineries interspersed with green fields. I turned off the canal and suddenly found myself at the hotel. I hadn't booked but my luck was in. Look left and I could have been in the more genteel outskirts of Stonehouse - pleasant houses, birds twittering, lane leading into woods. Look right and - cooling towers. I do believe it was a nuclear power station? The boys from the secret police had been working on my feet again but this time only with rubber truncheons. Maybe tomorrow it'll be whiffle bats.

Friday 27 April

I decided to stick with the Canal. Windy ways through the woods are fine but I like the straight lines. And surely this in one of the industrial wonders of the world. Two hundred yards wide in places and originally dug with pick and shovel. Wide paths on either side, reserved for fietsers and toegangers. You can hear the traffic in the near distance but much of the walk could be on a straight country lane. Saw one barge called Hiroshima another Okinawa.

Checked into the Botel Bavaria in Maastricht. The Botel is in fact a boat: my room is a cabin, complete with porthole. Central location on the Meuse. Weather held up: no rain. Maastricht is a peach of a city. The old quarter is convincingly mediaeval, or at least 17c, but the modern city on the west bank is just as beautiful. Free internet at the beautiful public library. Some barhopping brought me to the Walkabout Cafe (" An Australian term for the time when young aboriginal men follow songlines..." Is that what I'm doing? Conversation with a hip young Dutchman who sells overpriced (his word) designer gear on the Net. He admires my shoes! Dunlop Volleys! 29.90 at KMart! He admires my wallet (the tyvek one Rob gave me). It's so cool he takes a picture of it. I'm running out of exclamation marks. I could have sold a dozen of those wallets.

Saturday 28 April

Had to spend another day in Maastricht. Too beautiful to leave. Checked into Stay Okay hostel. Offered me a bed in a mixed dorm at half the price of a room on my own but couldn't face it. Will try in France. What if I had a Wandering Wiseman moment in the middle of the night? Had an OMG moment on the balcony - their barbecue is identical to the one the divers gave me.

The Dutch are the tallest people in the world. This is evinced by the urinals. Wanted to see the Rubens collection but it was not available. Instead went to the Bonnefanten museum. Beautiful prints by Tsukioka Kogyo (1869-1927).

Also an exhibition of paintings and installations by various modern artists. Joseph Beuys is apparently the most important postwar artist. He was apparently shot down over Russia and saved from the cold by peasants who rubbed him all over with fat and wrapped him in felt. Many of his works are composed of - fat and felt. Many of the works made me think but after a couple of hours I was longing for a nice fat Rubens nude and a glass of La Chouffe. Had dinner in McDonalds - friets to die for, burger to die of.

Sunday 29 April - Liege

Some confusion between the river Meuse and the Albert canal but walked south anyway. Also some confusion about which country I was in.But by midday I was indisputably in the land of the Walloons. Instant transition to French and considerably more evidence of the presence of dogs on the footpath. Vise was seedier than towns to the north. It being Sunday the only people on the streets were fat old women with short haircuts. Stopped for a beer at lunchtime and the height of the urinal confirmed I was no longer in Holland. I walked without my coat for the first time. I walked along a lovely grassy and untravelled path for some time until I found it blocked with barbed wire and unfriendly signs. I had gone too far to turn back so I found my way round the fence via the canal (or was it river-?) bank and went on through rather dense woods, my legs attacked by brambles and nettles until I was smart enough to roll down my trouser legs. I found myself in a massive steelworks. There were rolls of the stuff piled up on railcars, huge barges full of coal and miscellaneous ores. Vast modern buildings with strange retorts and smokestacks. It was devoid of life (Sunday) until I found a security checkpoint and polite but serious guards. How had I got in? Just strolled along the riverbank from Maastricht. Never climbed a fence or anything. They let me through a turnstyle. I was glad to have seen a steelworks up close but it would have been smarter to take a canal boat. There are regular cruises between Maastricht and Liege. Next time. It turned out I'd miscalculated the mileage. Another  28 kilometre blunder. I promised myself I'd keep all future walks to 6 hours.

Monday 30 April - Liege

I spent my day in Liege looking for maps and sightseeing. The youth hostel is in Outre Meuse, sometimes known as the independent republic of Outre Meuse for its long tradition of resistance to outside authority. It has a large north African population, beautiful cafes and a wonderfully relaxed atmosphere. I ran into a my first walker, Michel, a local from Attenhoven, on a 2 day pilgrimage to Banneux. We had dinner and a cafe crawl together. He claimed to have walked 35 kilometres that day. Hmm, I thought.