Up at eight forty five! If you’ve been following my posts for a while, you’ll fall off your chair in amazement. I did wake up just before seven and even got up for a moment, but I crawled back in to wait for Arne to wake up and next thing you know, it’s almost nine.
We learned yesterday that the hotel changed hands two weeks ago, this explains some of the confusion we’ve encountered. We did not get the room type we reserved initially, but they were very quick and polite in clearing that up and getting us another room (still not the right type, but at least it has a bath tub). Breakfast today is more of the same, it’s exceptionally in the restaurant instead of the breakfast room and nobody seems quite used to the procedure. I think we’re supposed get some bread and eggs from the kitchen, to supplement the meagre offer set out on a table nearby, but it’s not coming. I improvise and put my ham and cheese on the croissant, have the hard boiled egg plain and then the pain au chocolat for dessert. The green tea is pretty decent.
Back in the room we do a bit of digital exploring and find the Arboretum Robert Lenoir, about forty five minutes from here. Twenty nine hectares of special trees, sounds like heaven to me. Our food plan is all screwed up due to the late breakfast, so we take a Leo for lunch and aim to find a snack on the way in the afternoon. We park the car around eleven, eyeball the sky to estimate the chances of rain and decide to set out light, without water or rain jackets. The entrance is free and there’s a charming info point with leaflets and books. Visitors are encouraged to borrow, take or deposit a book and read them in hammocks strung around the park.
Without further ado, we pick one of the five loops and start walking. Les îlots de l’Ourthe – or the islets in the Ourthe river – is the oldest part and it’s full of smaller trees, specifically a large collection of Euonymus varieties, Acer palmatus and various other variaties and rhododendrons. Though the grass and undergrowth between the trees is not knee-high, there’s no actual path and we take this as permission to wander freely, occasionally ducking under branches to read the ancient plates declaring the latin name of the shrub and when it was planted. We don’t know whether to be disheartened or intimidated when we encounter thirty to sixty year old specimens of trees we have in our own garden. The comforting alternative way of looking at it is that we won’t be around anymore to deal with the Japanese maples having outgrown their spot under the big oak at home. Both the Acer and Euonymus trees/shrubs (I’m never sure where the border is) are known for their bright fall leaf colours and, so it’s an incredibly colourful scene, with bright reds, oranges and yellows. It’s the perfect time to be here: late enough for the bright colours, but early enough for the leaves to remain on the trees. The Ourthe river must have recently overflowed, we see accumulated debris against the protective netting around the tree trunks and a weirdly level line of grey dirt on the lower tree leaves.
We move on to the other loops, but they have less interesting tree varieties, though still nice fall colours. The Leo Go! is consumed on a bench overlook the Ourthe, we can sit around in a t-shirt, it’s so bizarrely warm. There’s an occasional ray of sun through the clouds, but mostly it’s grey and overcast.
It’s about two when we head back towards Our and we decide to stop in La Roche-en-Ardenne for a snack. A sensible salad later, we decide to explore the little village and the ruin on the rock above. The remains of the medieval castle perch on the rock, the floor and stairs hewn out of the bedrock and the walls built up from that stone. We follow the numbered walk and mostly just enjoy the views of the surrounding city and hills. We’re pretty tired by now and the weather is getting greyer, so we wrap up and head back to the hotel. Another bath, followed by a relaxing dinner in the hotel restaurant.
Febe writes 