Aalst

Thursday 15^th and Friday 16^th October 2015

We made the decision on arriving in Aalst that we were tired of the, to us, icy weather and looking at the weather forecast for Charleroi in the east where we were aiming for the lower Sambre River, we decided to chicken out and do this stretch next year. Now we would slow down the pace and plan our route to ensure that we could watch the Rugby World Cup at Irish pubs in Aalst, Tournai and Brugge on our way back to Diksmuide where, hopefully, the coastal weather might be a bit warmer than in the east amongst the foothills of the Ardennes. Probably windier but hopefully warmer.

Aalst is an alive city with some beautiful buildings

 But the highlight of Thursday was the birthday dinner we enjoyed at the Michelin starred T’Overhamme restaurant with Frederik and Josephine, slightly marred by the fact that it was either everyone had a la carte or everyone had the degustation menu, and some sloppy service by the vaguely arrogant sommelier. But very pretty food.

On Friday morning, after having finally received our folding seats, tub of propshaft grease and an oilfilter which Frederik had kindly organised, it was with great trepidation that I unscrewed the old filter and fitted the new. Thank heavens, it fitted properly! And so ended three months of searching for a correctly sized pair. That job out of the way it was off to the shop where Frederik had found the filter to get a few more – one for immediate fitment to the other engine, two for the next oil change when the boat is winterised and two for the first oil change in the summer. The very helpful man at the counter confirmed that they has another of the same filter in stock and that they would order four more which would be there by 08h00 the next morning. By chance I had brought along the old injector and asked if he had any to match. To cut a long story short, he did have stock and after initially quoting me €30 each (I had paid €32 each plus courier costs for not-quite-the-right-ones in Kuurne) we settled on €16 and when I arrived at the cashier, she insisted, despite my protestations, that it was €16 for all four injectors – I wasn’t going to argue further and walked out a very happy fella.

After fitting the second filter we were off exploring

Painting by Reubens

Altar sculpted from marble.

The new and the old.

 and of course, couldn’t resist sampling the famous Aalstvlaam (Aalst flan) – Mmmmmm! No wonder we are looking like Teletubbies but how else do we fight the cold?