"The really happy man is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour." - Anon
Saturday, 3 May 2008, carried echoes of childhood days out. The clouds were white, occasional and fluffy, just sitting in a blue sky minding their own business; we walked and drove all day along sun-dappled rivers; we skimmed stones and laughed and bought ice creams and got muddy; and though we were inland, every slope in the road seemed to promise that first magical view of the sea beyond the horizon...and most of all, we just travelled, slowly, getting lost and not caring, along the languid Semois and the stately Meuse, and through astonishing and previously unknown landscapes of valleys, cliffs and forests that grace the Belgian-French border around little towns like Revin.
Fast forward to Saturday 5 February, 2011, the same five of us detoured once again - on the way home from a wonderful family outing to the Thermes at Spa - but this time further upstream on the Meuse, from south of Liège, on past our old haunts of Seraing and Jemeppe (still as industrially ugly as ever, but exactly-half-a-lifetime-ago nostalgic nonetheless) and on through the gathering darkness through Huy and Andenne, before pizzas in Wavre.
Two years further on, Sunday 5 May 2013, and Ailsa and I were once again privileged to visit the Ardennes under the warm, sunny, cloud-enhanced skies of all our yesteryears. A lovely simple lunch of omelette and goat's cheese in the charming Belgian "mini Hay-on-Wye", Redu, was followed by a stroll with Jodie around the bookshops, before a drive through pine forests, skirting at times the shallow, always compelling Lesse, took us to Maissin (and its deeply moving Franco-German cemetery) to collect Jemima from her pre-Benin weekend on the farm.