La Roche en Ardenne, Belgium

Left Brussels on 21st June and travelled to La Roche in the Ardennes in south Belgium. Stopped in a beautiful place called Leuven on the way and had some lunch and a wander around. Continued down to La Roche via a spectacular scenic route through Namur, Dinant, Hans sur Lesse, Rochefort and into La Roche.

Spent the night on the banks of the 'Ourthe' river at a nice campsite and enjoyed sitting besides the river taking in the sounds of nature.

We discovered in the morning that the local air force must use the valley as a training ground as fighter jets buzzed the valley floor waking up us as the afterburners kicked in and sent the valley shaking. Once we knew what the hell it was it was actually quite a site to see.

Spent day 2 in the town climbing up to a really nice castle (our first of many to come) and took in the sights overlooking the valley.

Later in the day we took a drive to Monshau a tiny little medieval village (in Germany) tucked away in a valley, full of little shops and restaurants. It was very quiet as most of the tourists had already left, which was great.

Drove back to La Roche and then ventured into the pub at the site to watch the Australia v Croatia game, much to the locals disgust as they all wanted to watch the Brasil v Japan game on at the same time. As we were the only ones from one of the countries playing we won out. Worst part for the locals was listening to the game in Dutch (which we didn't care about) so not only did the locals not get to watch the game they wanted, but also couldn't understand the commentary of the game that was on.

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