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Visit to Belgium for New Year

Started 27th December 2017 at 09:32 · Laurence Jones
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Hi All,

Christina and I have left our adult children behind at home and have ventured over to Belgium in our XJS V12 RHD Convertible.

Photo 1151

We are staying a few days near Mons before moving over to Brugge for New Year – stopping off near Nivelles on Friday for our meet up for lunch with our Belgium members.

We will be venturing out sight-seeing most days, looking to locate suitable visits for the proposed Club Tour in May Click Here to register your interest. We also need to find suitable accommodation venues for us to stay in (you won’t all fit in the Gite we’re currently staying in.

I’ll post up pictures as we visit places over the next few days

Laurence

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    • 28th December 2017 at 09:48 #10772
      Laurence Jones
      Keymaster

      Day 1

      Photo 1154
      we visited the Waterloo Battlefield Memorial 1815. The wind was a bit too strong to take a hike up the monument.

      Photo 1155

    • 28th December 2017 at 09:52 #10774
      Laurence Jones
      Keymaster

      We then went and visited The Sloping Lock at Ronquieres.

      Photo 1156

      This is engineering on a massive scale. The boats literally come up and down the hill in giant water filled cradles on rails.

      Photo 1157

    • 28th December 2017 at 09:58 #10777
      Laurence Jones
      Keymaster
      • Our final visit of the day was The Funicular Lift of Strepy-Thieu.

      Photo 1158

      this is one of the largest boat lifts in the world. Similar sized water filled cradles to those used in the Sloping lock are lowered or raised over 240feet / 73 metres.  Building was completed in 2002 at which time it was the tallest in the world.

    • 29th December 2017 at 21:40 #10809
      Laurence Jones
      Keymaster

      Photo 1162

      Enjoyed a lovely Italian meal and a few hours good company with 4 of our Belgium members today (Guy, Pascal Mathieu ‍ , Gerard Harings ‍ and Lionel Martin ‍ .

      Thanks to. Guy Roelandts ‍ for choosing a great meeting venue.

      Laurence

    • 30th December 2017 at 11:11 #10836
      Guy Roelandts
      Participant

      Hi Laurence,

      It was a pleasure for me to “host” you and the other members. Nice meet and talk time.

      Hope Brugge is nice too.

      Drive safely back home and Happy New Year.

      Regards,

      Guy

    • 1st January 2018 at 21:52 #10897
      Laurence Jones
      Keymaster

      Brugge was very nice, as was Gent which we visited yesterday and walked around the Christmas Markets.

      Unfortunately the wind picked up and the New Year fireworks in Brugge were cancelled 🙁 

      Last year we couldn’t see them as the Fog came down at 23:45 and lifted at 00:15 – think we’ll have to come back next year (third time lucky).

      Journey home was smooth with fairly clear roads – though we had a lot of heavy rain driving between London and Birmingham.

      Completed just over 2,100 KM / 1,200 Miles on the round trip.

      Laurence

    • 7th January 2018 at 11:59 #11000
      Martin
      Participant

      Hello Laurence, and you all !

      With a silght delay, Happy New Year et a lot of good things in 2018  🙂

      It was a real good time last Friday. I hope we will have the opportunity to put this back, who knows, in England?

      It’s a shame for the fireworks. Perhaps a third attempt will be good!

      Regards, bien à vous tous,

      Lionel.

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