Bringing Leon home

Last February we had a great week to drive up from Seville, Spain, all the way to Brussels, Belgium. 

We took our time and stopped in 4 different places along the way, the trip added up to some 2000 plus km.

The first one was la Vallee del Jerte. Never hear of it? It's actually a known place, at least for the locals, the extremaduros, for its beautiful cherry tree blossom in spring. We were too early and saw about 2 trees in blossom, but we saw a lots of cherry trees, everywhere!! 

It takes some 2-3 hours to drive through the valley, formed by the Jerte river. There are also cool hikes around, like the route called "Garganta de los Infiernos". It's special for its natural pools (like hiidenkirnu) carved out of the rock by water erosion over the thousands of years. 

Our following stop was at Hondarriba which is a border town between France and Spain. We stayed two nights there in this beautiful Parador, I'm a big fan of Paradors :) So being a border town, the hotel was placed in an old defence castel, building of which started already in the 10th centry. The town itself is super cute too, but I can imagine it gets super busy over summer. When we were there, many restaurants were closed and they were fixing places to be ready for summer.

Getting to France changed much for driving, the toll roads are super expensive and full of trucks (see map Part 2 below). But you get to drive fast. We did some parts like that, and others where we took more time. Like to go through the west part of Bordeaux, the nature park of Medoc region. 

 

Yes, Medoc like the famous French wines, they do come from there!! But there is also a beautiful Atlantic coast with white sand, there's sandy pine forest and - yes, lots of vineyards and castles to visit. But they are more on the east side of the park where the river creates an estuary area before it comes down to the sea. There are some lagoons and wetland areas, too, good for the birds. To get back to the mainland, we took a ferry boat which was great fun!

That night we stayed in Rochefort, I thought it was the famous place for blue cheese (spelled differently!) but this place was famous for nothing :/ Well, they had this strange bridge there that Matt wanted to see and then we were off headed for Rouan, Normandy (see the map for Part 3).

 

Did I tell you that I love Normandy? My formative years in France were spent first in Caen and then in Paris which left an eternal love for those two places. I had not been to Rouen before, so I wanted to see the famous rose windown, but it was unfortunately under restoration and the cathedral itself was closed. 

Nevertheless, I had a divine meal in Rouen, oysters as starters, then Cocquille Saint Jacques (Great scallop) and a nice bottle of white wine. The place, called Le Fish, was very nice, super service and not even that expensive - take me back!!  

From Rouen we drove to Brussels in one go. Curiously, we were stopped by the French customs' officers close to the border! They flagged us down on the busy highway and signaled us to turn off the highway. Well, they were interested if I had more than 10 000 euros in cash on me - no luck!

 

 Part 1: Seville to Hondaariba

 

Part 2: Hondaariba to Rochefort

Part 3: to Brussels

 

Return to my deloved Bois de Halle

I love cities that have forests nearby. 

So one of the big exitements about getting back to Brussels was to get back to my favourites forests! Last weekend, despite near freezing temperatures and ice cold wind, we went back to the Bois de Halle/ Hallerbos.

It's a special forest to me because of all the trail rides that I've done there. The stable I went riding for many years between 2002-2010 (or something like that) was just a stone throw away. 

I was just reading about it, the total area of the forest now amounts to 542 ha, so that's a lot of land to get lost in! My advantage on the horse back was always that horsies wanted to go home, so if ever I felt uncertain about turning left or right, I would be sure that the horse would take the shortest and smartest decision (they are like living GPS!). 

This time we had to use the map on a mobile at one point, we felt a bit turned around with all trails looking alike and pointing to 5 different directions. As all the roads are also called dreef of something (e.g. a tree Eikendreef), unless you have really memorised the name of the return trail well, you might have a doubt or two. 

Anyway, the forest is most special for its flowers. We already saw some daffondils (narciscus) and in a month or so, the blue wild hyacints should be up there. It's an amazing blue carpet that covers huge parts of the forest! 

Reading about the plants in the forest also explained something about a curious smell that we sometimes would smell. There were spots in the forest that, around late sping, smelled like garlic! It must be this one!