Camping Maka

Last weekend, J and I went to Belgium in an attempt to have a solid camping weekend with campfires, canoeing, horseback riding, and hiking. As it turned out, Belgium had plans for us.

The first day, we arrived at the beginning of the owners' lunch break. This wasn't terribly surprising as they did a similar thing in the German campground we stayed at. We did, however, find ourselves with three hours of waiting to do. On impulse, J found a place called Chateau Fort. Sounded castle-like to us, and it was only 30 minutes away, so we decided to check it out.

Here is Bouillon from the parking lot for the castle...

Don't let a bird take your dog!

Sadly, they did not allow dogs, so we left Etsy in the car. It was quite the hidden gem. It was the castle of the Duke of Bouillon, the leader of the first crusade. It was also a castle that Charlamagne was believed to have proposed to build and had been occupied by Napolean. The castle, while not the most modern was by far the most exciting we had ever seen. There were lots of random side passageways, there was a HUGE cellar level almost like a catacombs, there were several hidden outdoor alcoves, the castle was actually a series of combined keeps but constructed in a way that no one inside could see all of the others at once, there was a hunting bird aviary, and a very interesting chapel. There was also a randomly huge exhibit inside with TONS of calligraphy inks, nibs, quills, and examples and a printing press with a full drawer box of letters.

Here's a view of the castle from the hilltop...

A first for us, they had a hunting bird aviary there.  Probably for display only, but they had two owls, and eagle, and two vultures that we knew of.  Pretty cool!

Here's J from the highest outlook point in the castle.  The castle was deceptively small-looking from the outside.  It has at least four separate sections joined by what felt like miles of tunnels and hallways.  There were also over a dozen hidden alcoves which were probably for small artillery but I poetically thought of them as meditation spots :)

For you Labyrinth fans, I was in the Oubliette.

This was a large cellar passageway in the bowels of the castle.  They had a cistern, lots of rooms for storage, and several ventilation spaces.  The passageway had to have been over 200 meters long!  We never got to the opposite end of it.

There was a chapel that they took a picture of before restoring it.  There were four shields with different family crests on them, a large crack through the entire floor that looked almost man made, and a hollowed out crucifix in the floor.  The crucifix in the floor gave kind of a creepy feel to the place.

We then went back, set up camp, and went to bed for the next day.

The next day, we found that, unlike the website implied, the campground did not offer horseback riding and because the water was low they were not renting out canoes. In our failed quest to find horseback riding, we found what we thought was a tourist office. Well, it wasn't a tourist office, but a stand of fliers. I took some that looked interesting, and we decided to visit the Citadelle in Dinant. It was impressive from the outside, but was pretty simple inside: a big wall on top of a cliff with rooms built alongside the of the wall. It's sole function in history was to defend the bridge across the river with catapults, cannons, guns, arrows...whatever was available. It was used heavily by Napolean and World War I. They had an interesting arms and armor display with greatswords, armor with musket holes, and muskets and rifles used throughout history up to World War I. We did get to bring Etsy on this tour, so that was nice too.

This is a view of Dinant from the Citadelle.  The large building above is the University.  The bridge is what the Citadelle defended throughout most of it's history.

This was the town church.  Hopefully, the video J took of it will upload and you can see what it looked like inside.

Etsy's first tour.  She actually did pretty well.

J could not get enough of this mannequin's hair and 'stache.  She asked how I felt about potentially looking like that.

No optical illusion.  This entire room was sloped about 15-20 degrees.  It supposedly was the result of WWI damage sustained.

We decided to randomly search around after the tour.  I saw a picture for what was supposed to be an ostrich farm (see the Autruc... sign).  I was disappointed to find none there.  We then chose to follow the sign pointing to what J thought was a hidden church or monument.  What we found was...

...a small statue behind bars in a monument about the size of a person.  This was literally in the middle of field.  We actually saw a lot of random statues and mini-shrines along all of the roads, on average one every 5 miles.  We don't know the significance, but it was interesting.

We decided to return to Dinant for dinner.  Here is Dinant with a good view of the Citadelle over it.

Apparently, the man who invented the saxophone is from Dinant.  They had oversized saxophones everywhere and a statue of him on a bench.  J decided to join him.

Jupiler, pronounced yoopehlay, was the locally favored Belgian beer.  Some of our campground neighbors had a case of it.  J approved as well.

We almost visited the Freyr Mansion, but while it seemed very impressive, we opted for dinner in Dinant instead. For the Game of Thrones fans, I joked about how we almost visited the Freys.  We then went back to camp.

The next day, I tried to see if I could learn how to fly fish, one of the things they offered also at the campground. I apparently asked too close to lunchtime and was turned down. Not entirely surprised, we decided to find a castle J really likes in one of the fliers we found.

We found what was locally known as Sleeping Beauty's castle. It is one of a handful of castles still owned by a family that has owned it since the 13th century.  It was really cool for the both of us for several reasons.  I liked it because they had TONS of genealogy things everywhere showing the family lines, all of the family crests, under what conditions the crests would change, what was going on in the world at any given point in recorded history for the family, and what families were affiliate with them.  J like how they had all original furniture and furnishings that were in the castle throughout it's history and all of the restoration pictures they had posted.  It was a real treat to be in a castle that was still maintained and in the hands of its medieval family owners.

 The Chateau de Veves, or Sleeping Beauty's Castle.

This is another castle that the same family owned, but they still live in it so it is off limits.  J REALLY wanted to check it out, but as expected they had it gated off from a ways out.

During restoration, it was found that the floor had a square rock pattern that the owners fully restored.  It looked like a really cool tile pattern.

The fireplace also had four family crests worked with black stone on the floor in front of it.

That's me, looking at a chart of their family tree from about 1300-1800.  I'm standing next to a statue of plate mail that was about my size.  See how cool of an effect the floor has with the natural lighting?

I wanted a copy of this.  It's essentially an index of all of the local family crests, with descriptions on the sides of what each item means, and below what any given crown means.  Most of the crowns were not for kings, queens, princes, or princesses, but were for positions of power below that.

A lot of the rooms were restored to Louis the XVI era.

You think you've got china?

In this room, the bed was essentially closeted into the wall.  According to the audioguide, many rooms were used for more than one purpose.  Breakfast was often held in one of the living rooms, for example.  Here, a lounge also doubled as a bedroom for guests.

Here is a video of the dining room with genuine dishes from the period.  The audio you hear is a clip from the audio tour we borrowed.  The audioguide is talking about all of the castles the family owns and how most of them are no longer standing.  "Lederkirche Beaufort" was the last name of some of the more recent successors.  The audioguide at this point said the name so many times that still, a week later, I remember it.

Don't mess with the one who brings the food!  The kitchen, from all they can tell, was the least disturbed of all of the original components of the castle and required the least restoration.

We then did more exploring in the nearby Celles, and found an old abby that had the sarcophagus of a Saint Hadelin. We got the impression that the castle owners were not the only wealthy medieval family that is still around.  Celles had an old feel to it with money spent where it counted: well maintained farms, very clean cafes, only one or two story high old stone residential buildings, well maintained gardens and landscaping.  The church and abby grounds actually felt the least maintained!  Unfortunately, we did not get to meet any clergy.

 Here is where the sarcophagus of St. Hadelin is.  We chose not to try entering the abby as it looked like it was still being used as a school and the doors appeared locked.

Here is a picture of Celles with the abby on the right on the hill and the main steeple in the middle being the church.  I saw my first european pigs here, on that thin green strip to the left of the road below!  There was also a flock of sheep hiding under the tree in the middle of the picture.

With still a half of a day to explore, we decided to visit the St. Joseph's Church and St. Benedict Abby grounds.  This was almost a collection of abbys and was a really happening place for a Sunday evening: college kids and teens, middle-aged harley bikers, young families, old families, old couples, lots of dogs with their owners, and little kids everywhere.  All five parking lots were full.  I'm sure there were at least 300 people there at any given time with people constantly going in and out.

We did not tour the abby, but we did look at the church, which was in a surprising state of disrepair given all of the money they were clearly making from the mass of people that were there and the clergy that were taking classes there.  It was almost built like a college that also happened to brew beer and make cheese.  We figured the food was the real reason people showed up.  The cafeteria really felt like the Dairy Building at the Minnesota State Fair except without the metal bar dividers: pretty much chaos.  Add to that everyone speaking Flemish and French, very rarely English, and you get the idea.  The cheese was crazy good though, and J liked the beer.

The first place we've seen where dogs may leave their steamy stinkers in a certain spot.  Etsy, being the lady she is, refused to spend any time in that spot.

Here is the St. Benedict's church for the abby.  The college or seminary (I was never quite sure which it was) connected to the back and right of the church, and wrapped around in a very large square.

Here are J and Etsy on the grass in front of the church.  Etsy did pretty well, even with all of the other dogs around.

We snagged some fries on our way back to the campsite, but were sad to find, once again, that they did not have that awesome Heinz Curry Mustard that they had at the fry stand in Bruges by the tourist information booth.  Grr!  That is the ONLY place we have found it thus far, including grocery stores!  It HAS to be sold somewhere else!  It is so crazy good!

Once back to the campsite, we collected firewood for our fire.  The previous nights we couldn't build one because it was either raining or our neighbors had conquered it.  We finally got the fire going really bright and hot and steady at 9:30pm, and then Etsy went ballistic at something she saw in the dark.  We couldn't see what it was, but being as late as it was and the fact that she was on edge from that point on, we had to put the fire out and go to bed.  We were really hoping to enjoy the fire and roast marshmallows, but we didn't want to get kicked out in the middle of the night because of a barking dog.

Here are some pictures of the campground and our campsite.  They capitalize on fly fishing here and built a few rock half-dams for the big fish to hide behind.

Here was our campsite for the weekend.  It got pretty cold in the night and the morning, but warmed up quick when the sun came out.

Another view from the river.  This was considered low water levels.  I don't know what normal is, but I saw a few pictures of the water being high enough where the first two feet of the tree here was underwater.

Ah yes.  The good old iron skillet.  Although heavy, it really does cook the best of any pan I've ever used.  Right after cooking this batch, Etsy gulped down two of the sausages before we could blink.  We kept her on a really tight leash around our food after that.

A nice little modification J devised.  Someone left a big pile of very big and flat river stones.  Since our campsite had a light layer of mud, she made a little paved entryway for our tent.  It worked quite well!

The next day we packed camp and went home.  The trip definitely went differently than we anticipated, but it was fun.  Man, with all the visiting in Belgium and France we are doing, we may have to start picking up French!