Cistercian Success

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Happy Canada Day everyone!!!

Both the Mission and the Embassy closed on Canada Day, so Christine and I decided to take advantage of the mid-week day off and go and visit something. We decided on Villers-la-Ville, which is a ruined monastery in the middle of a forest about an hour away from Brussels.

I was wondering why the train would take an hour to get there, seeing as how the place was only 30 minutes away, but then I realized that we had to transfer and it was the milk-run train that had to stop at every possible stop in Brussels.

We arrived at the train station of the small town of Villers-la-Ville. It had two platforms, and a bus stop and that was the stop. It was decidedly pleasant, but very tiny! Christine and I then wandered the 1.5 km through the pretty town up to the ruined monastery.

Arrival at the monastery was beautiful. I had been to ruined abbeys in the UK before, but this was different. First off, there were 9 other people at the site. One was selling tickets, one was mowing the lawn, three were setting up scaffolding for a concert, two were having a picnic and two were other tourists. It was so nice to wander around without people everywhere, although a British couple managed to have the strange ability to get in the way of almost every single one of my photos for half the time we were there!

The place was great to walk around. The rooves of the structures were all gone, as were some of the walls but what remained was very evocative. Many walls were ivy-clad and there were tree branches coming in through some of the windows. Walking through the main church itself was quite something as there were still designs visible in the frames of the windows. The cloisters were quite pretty as were the visitor’s quarters which provided stunning views back to the church and the surrounding buildings.

I loved wandering around the Abbey and it has been one of my favourite sites that I have visited so far in Belgium. It’s a small country, but offers an incredibly diverse range of sites.

Bye for now,

Peter

Things I learned at Villers-la-la-Ville:
-Ivy, when given time, will cover the entire world.
-It’s nice to avoid tourists and seppos for a change.
-I cannot fit through 4 foot high doorways, no matter how much I contort.

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Comments

[Teija]

Good job on avoiding those seppos, Pete! Looks like a fun day trip!