Weekend trip to the French Ardennes

It must have been some time last year that I was looking around the area of Ardennes when I found this beautiful house at the Belgian French border. It was extremely cheap, and as we got a few cars, it looked easily manageable.

Maybe because we didn’t have a lot of weekends trips in the last months, I lost track of the things, and I realized that we had this trip about two weeks ago, when I then started making a plan for it. Fortunately, it turned out that the apartment was fairly close to Dinant, meaning we had the possibility to do the same Sunday program: kayaking. For Saturday, I made a few sample tracks, and it looked ok-ish.

I had this bitter experience in Bad Berleburg, where I was badly criticized of not buying enough food. This time, I simply bought whatever people told me to buy. The amount was in the end huge, and the cost per person was also over 30€ including two times dinner, one or two times lunch and two times breakfast with a lot of fruits and chips just in case. I guess it’s still cheap compared to eating out, but it’s quite a price.

This time we got two cars, one from Giampaolo and one from Amalia. That’s more or less the configuration these days. I’m really extremely thankful for their support. Actually it wouldn’t have been possible without it.

The apartment was for 9 people at most with 6 beds in total (3 double and 3 single). Amalia and I occupied one double bed in a room, and the others all got one bed. That was actually pretty nice.

Friday evening, people started arriving around 5pm. We then put all the food for dinner in Giampaolo’s car, so that in case Amalia’s car was arriving a lot later they can start cooking, which was a lesson that we learned last time. In fact I suggested it wouldn’t be necessary because we were supposed to leave at the same time, but Inna still took care of it. This turned to be a brilliant idea, because Amalia’s car departed around 45 min later in the end.

On the way, we picked up Mehrbod at Aachen. It was fairly easy as Aachen Rothe Erde was quite close to the highway, which we would have taken anyway whether we were going to pick him up or not.

At some point we got a message from Inna, who had arrived at the apartment much earlier than we did with Giampaolo. The owner was apparently there and saying that we would have to clean the apartment ourselves afterwards or pay 60€ for cleaning. To be true, even with 60€ the apartment was really cheap, but this left a really horrible aftertaste for us, because it was not written on their page, and it felt like we were cheated. I don’t understand why they didn’t write it from the beginning.

The road in Belgium was not particularly good, but ok what did we expect. We arrived in the apartment somewhat later than we expected, but by the time we arrived in the apartment, Giampaolo and Inna were more or less done with the preparation. We just needed to open a bottle of wine and drink. So perfect 😀 We had carbonara with zucchini and some salad. We forgot to buy dessert, but frankly there was so much food that it didn’t really matter.

After the dinner we played Timeline, which is a game where you have to attribute historical events to correct year interval. In principle you have some advantage if you have played it before, but in reality you forget everything very quickly, so it doesn’t really matter in the end. Mehrbod somehow still kept claiming that Amalia and I should get more cards because we played it before, and of course we lost. The funny thing is we were all more or less equally good, and of course right after the game we didn’t anymore which events were in which year. It’s such an interesting, ostensibly educative, and in the  totally unproductive game.

We then kept drinking and went to bed around midnight.

Day II (September 14, Saturday)

We got up some time past 7am. Inna was up even earlier and was apparently walking around the river in the morning.

I had prepared three tracks for today. All of them got rejected. In the end we simply decided to walk from our apartment to the next village, along the river.

But of course before this we had breakfast. I had an infinite amount of bread, but since we were in France, we went to a nearby bakery and got some croissants. In strong contrast to last time’s breakfast, it felt like we had everything. Actually more than just everything because there was also so much remaining.

For lunch, I had bought a lot of wraps this time. Really A LOT of wraps. We baked them briefly in the oven with cheese on top, which we put in Giampaolo’s panini machine with vegetables inside. This was a brilliant idea. I can’t believe everyone hated wraps last time so much, because I think this time we all really loved it.

We could have taken a train from our village to the next village and come back, but somehow we preferred to walk to the next village. This turned out to be a pretty bad idea later, especially when we left the apartment, which was some time after 11am, there was a train coming, but I’ll come back to this below.

In today’s plan, we were going on top of a hill along the river, so I was expecting a nice view. That was pretty much true at the very beginning. We walked up a hill and we could directly take a beautiful group photo.

This part was some sort of Roman remaining or something. There were ruins everywhere, with some explanation. With a bit of field and nice view over the valley, it was a fun area.

We were then basically walking through a thick forest. It was difficult to see a few meters away. It also didn’t bring much that we were on top of a hill in this regard. On top of this, the path itself was not really nice. So at some point we decided to go down to another river, which was running in parallel to the main river. This turned out to be a brilliant idea. We were at least walking in a beautiful forest, instead of some ugly street.

Along this small stream we had a break at some point. It was right on the border between Belgium and France, with one side being Belgium and the other side in France. So some of us were having lunch in Belgium, some others in France, and some people were in two countries at the same time.

After the break, we tried to continue our way towards the village, but the paths became a lot more wild. We separated into different groups and walked according to what we considered the best. At some point we could see some wild boars crossing the path far away in front of us. That was quite a scene, and some people were actually quite scared. We kept going anyway.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) we didn’t see wild boars anymore, but we also didn’t see the valley either. We now understand why there was no single photo on Komoot.

According to my initial plan, we would have had around 1h in the village before the train was arriving, but in reality we made so many detours and stops, that we were going to miss the train. There was a nice spot right before we went down from the hill, where we also took a quick photo, but then we rushed to the train station.

Inna and I were ahead of everyone, and we were going to arrive at the train station just one minute after the planned departure of the train. That’s a kind of moment you would think you can still make it if you are in Germany. Here in France, unfortunately in this case, trains are punctual. And so, the train left right in front of our eyes. Well, even if we two had made it, the others wouldn’t have, so things would not have been a lot better anyway.

The problem was that the next train was going to come 2h later. Initially we thought about hitchhiking back home, but we decided to have some sweets in the city and postponed the decision. There were two bakeries open, and after I got a delicious éclair, I felt the whole exhaustion and had a nap for a while. I don’t know what the others were doing in the meantime, but when we went to a nearby bar to get Belgian beer, 2h flew away really quickly.

At home, we immediately started cooking, and we had dinner around 10pm, just like yesterday. Some people could play pétanque in the meantime in the garden. Oh I didn’t comment on the house so far, but it was a really beautifully furnished house. It’s really a pity that the owner hadn’t mentioned anything about the cleaning fee, because otherwise it was such a nice place.

We had parmigiana for dinner, with pasta from yesterday and some salad. There was an impressive thing: We used up a whole bottle of 750 ml olive oil and one full package of Parmesan. We’ll be prepared better next time XD Anyway there’s nothing I have to say because the dinner was perfect.

After dinner, we played UNO and stayed in the living room for quite some time. We went to bed around midnight.

There was a problem with the sink this time: it was clogged. At the same time there was no filter, so it was clear that it was going to be clogged, and with the amount of chemical products it was also clear that they were used to it. On top of this, water was also leaking. I don’t understand how they could possibly do such a thing to us.

Day III (September 15, Sunday)

We got up some time past 7am today again. My body simply doesn’t understand it’s a holiday. Inna had taken some croissants. We had very slow breakfast, and prepared some wraps again, because there were so many remaining. Of course even after we prepared wraps there were so many remaining, so we took all of them back home. In general there was a lot of food remaining, and it mostly came to our place and Giampaolo’s. I hope we can get rid of it at T-Day next week.

We then left the place around 11am. It was a bit of hectic towards the end, but we worked pretty well together and managed it in time.

Basically the day ended in this moment, because Amalia and I started a fight again, and it didn’t end till the end of the day.

We went to the kayaking place, stood in line, kayaked, and went back home.

That’s it. Thanks for reading if you did so.