{"id":4548,"date":"2016-04-19T03:55:52","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T17:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=4548"},"modified":"2026-05-12T08:08:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T07:08:30","slug":"speeding-through-countries-in-record-time-for-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2016\/04\/19\/speeding-through-countries-in-record-time-for-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Speeding Through Countries In Record Time (For Us)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A good story needs an interesting life……<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The
The circular panorama painting, 110 metres long x 12 metres high, showing scenes from the Battle of Waterloo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

April 18th<\/sup> means we are in the second half of April, which is well into Spring and we would have thought it would be a bit warmer by now.\u00a0 So when I stepped outside early in the morning, I was a bit taken aback to find myself slipping on the ice on the step stool.\u00a0 The grass all around Eileen was crispy crunchy and sparkling with ice crystals, so I made it a very quick dash to the chilly bathroom and in my haste didn\u2019t notice that the sky was the most lovely clear blue, not a cloud, not a raindrop, just blue.<\/p>\n

It took us about an hour to get from Camping Hof van Eeden near Aarschot, to Waterloo, just south of Brussels.\u00a0Yes I did sing a little Abba song en route. \u00a0\u00a0We thought we would spend a couple of hours wandering the area made famous for the Battle of Waterloo, a.k.a. the Battle La Belle Alliance.\u00a0 But there is now a brand new, huge, interactive Wellington Museum, complete with 3D movie as well as the old \u2018Panorama\u2019,\u00a0which meant we found ourselves spending over four-hours there.\u00a0 The ticket did include the\u00a0five-minute shuttle bus ride and entry\u00a0to Hougoumont, a farm, which was in the centre of the main battle in June 1815.\u00a0 We also puffed our way up the 226 steps to get to the top of the Butte du Lion, while a party of young children bounced their way down, counting every step as they went.<\/p>\n

\"
Rodney viewing the battlefield from the Butte du Lion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The
The Panorama building and underground Wellington Museum from part-way down the Butte du Lion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Just as we got back on the main road south, we were pulled over, again; this time by the Belgian Gendarmerie; we\u2019re beginning to wonder why we look so suspicious to the European law enforcers\u2026?\u00a0 Ah well, after all the awful terror attacks of late, we would rather they were overzealous.\u00a0 After our papers were all checked, the friendly uniformed chappie sent us on our way with instructions on finding the Napoleon Museum, a “must see” he said, but we were a bit overloaded with history by then and put some mileage under Eileen\u2019s belt , finally stopping for the night at Camping Spineuse near Neufch\u00e2teau, close to the Luxembourg border. It was a nice campsite, good showers and a delightful arrangement of more rabbits and ducks than campers.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Butte du Lion and the French Memorial seen from the Hougoumont orchard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tuesday was another ice crystal morning, even the rabbits looked like they were hopping a bit higher to avoid getting frozen tails.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t waste time, we got on the road again and crossed into Luxembourg and within an hour drove out of Luxembourg into France.\u00a0 We\u2019ve only been going six days and already left England and gone to the Netherlands, Belgium, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France; not bad, eh?!!\u00a0 Oh, but I\u2019ve just realised we\u2019ve been in and out of Belgium and forgotten to buy any Belgian chocolate, how very silly of us.<\/p>\n

A curious fact:\u00a0I have seen more Shetland Ponies in the Netherlands and Belgium, than I have seen in a lifetime.\u00a0 One theory we have is that because the land is so flat here, you can spot them more easily…..<\/p>\n

We had no interaction with police today, although when we spotted a policeman on a motorbike approaching us at a petrol station, we both did a little nervous twitch.\u00a0 Just after 3pm we picked camping De L\u2019Ille in Mulhouse for another overnighter and tomorrow morning we\u2019ll cross into Switzerland.<\/p>\n

\"Hougoumont\"
Hougoumont<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A good story needs an interesting life……     April 18th means we are in the second half of April, which is well into Spring and we would have thought it would be a bit warmer by now.\u00a0 So when I stepped outside early in the morning, I was a bit taken aback to find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8241,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548\/revisions\/8241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}