Day 7, 8, and 9: In Pontével

 

Arrival in Pontével

We made it to Pontével a little after lunch on Saturday, completing almost 3000 kilometers of driving, and introduced ourselves to Annalies. She is a Dutch citizen and friend of the proprietors, who has been living for 25 years in California, is back for a visit and has been looking after the place for three weeks. She showed us around the property, and explained the various water irrigation systems in place to keep the vines and other plants well watered. It involves maybe an hour of work in the early morning, and with the three of us it goes quickly.

The entrance

Many grapevines

In the garden

View from the terrace

We got ourselves installed in the guest house for the first couple of days, as Annalies planned to stay for an overlap of a couple of days, and only left this morning (Monday). It’s a great house, really well-appointed with a nice kitchen, and the evenings are lovely and cool for sleeping. So far it has been 28 or 29 degrees at the hottest part of the day, which is fine... later this week it will be hotter, getting close to 34 degrees midweek.

As soon as we could we visited Raoul and Lulu next door, our old neighbours from Watermael-Boitsfort!

Maggie and I haven’t seen them since four summers ago, and for Malcolm it had been even longer.  They invited us for a stupendous lunch yesterday and we spent most of the afternoon there catching up.

Today it’s a very quiet day.  We finished up the watering this morning, and I think I have a clear idea of the drip irrigation, so no stress. We have lots of food in the fridge and a good supply of cold drinks.

One last thing: I have often lamented the lack of a good ice cream sandwich in Belgium. I have a fond memory of being a small child staying with my family at Grand-Uncle Desmond’s cottage at Golden Lake, and walking with my Aunts and Uncle over to the little store and eating one. For me that is a sense memory that means “summer”… look what I found in the Lidl grocery store here?

tears of joy