Saturday 17th June

Maastricht is in a strange position geographically. It is located in a small bulge which is surrounded by Belgium on two sides; Germany on the third and a small corridor linking it to the rest of the Netherlands. I wonder whether it was its position at a point where three European countries meet that was the reason it was chosen as the place for the signing of the Maastricht Treaty.

We had booked a walking tour of Maastricht and caught a bus into the centre from just outside the campsite.

The tour was two hours long and although overall the city is a little bland it had an interesting history plenty of absorbing areas to explore.

The guide showed us “the oldest bridge in the Netherlands”, which since it has been destroyed and rebuilt several times, including during the Second World War, I’m not sure it really deserves that title. The large market place was fairly typical of what we have come to expect in Germany and Belgium, with a large Town Hall.

More interesting, in my opinion, was the slightly unusual architecture of the Romanesque Basilica of St. Sevarius. Although it had the round arched windows typical of Romanesque churches its outline was more adventurous than is usually the case.

Maastricht has come up with an interesting solution to having too many churches and that is to convert them for modern use. We were told one was a big event space and we were shown another that had been turned into a library.

After the tour we had a light lunch in the city accompanied by my first Belgian beer since leaving Brussels nearly three months ago.

In summary, although Maastricht is a very pleasant city, I would not put it high on my list of places to visit.

Back at the campsite Skye continued to have great fun playing fetch in the River Meuse. She even managed to entice strangers on the river bank to throw things for her!

Sunday 18th June

Another day of travel as we scramble to get back to Blighty before our 90 days runs out. This time we only had a 2.5 hour journey across Belgium from one side to the other, to Ypres or Ieper as the Flemish call it.

We set ourselves up on Camping Jeugdstadion (€20 a night including electricity) (50.8463, 2.8969). It’s a very green little campsite about half a mile out of centre of Ypres.

My main reason for coming to Ypres was for the Last Post Ceremony where, except during the Second World War, the last post has been played at 8pm every night at the Menin Gate since 1929

. The temperature is still very hot (28ºC) and humid and so we decided to delay our visit to the ceremony until tomorrow, when we hope it will be cooler.

I nipped into the centre to get my bearings because I’ve booked a half day tour of the Ypres Salient at 9.30 am tomorrow and I wanted to make sure I knew how to find the pick up point.

Ypres was completely destroyed during the First World War but the city has been restored to exactly how it was before the war broke out. If you did not know you would think, walking into the market place, that Ypres had one of the best preserved market places in Europe!

The day ended with thunderstorms and heavy rain, so hopefully the weather may become a little cooler.