Belgium

Martin takes his routing instructions from a lady we know only as Mrs Google. As if by magic her gentle voice speaks to us from inside the dashboard from the moment we set off, first of all guiding us safely out of the convoluted maze of roads that surround the house of our Dutch friends then giving us periodic tips on which exit to take from the next roundabout or where we might like to try turning off the road. We are driving south, and chose to travel at our own pace by asking her to guide us only on smaller roads, thus avoiding motorways and giving us the chance to visit more interesting places and to gaze about us at the changing scenery.

We are about one hour and a half into the journey when we are thrilled to encounter our first hill! This comes as quite a shock to us although on reflection it is little more than a slight upward gradient on a straight road. But what it tells us is that we have become acclimatised to the Dutch landscape, so used to living and walking about on the level that this slight deviation from the horizontal takes us by surprise and fills us with with joy - we are from Scotland after all, a place not known for being flat.

We soon realise that it is more than just the gradient that is beginning to change. The road signage, whilst still in Dutch and thus largely incomprehensible to us, is subtly different with markings on the roads less evident and cycle paths, whilst still universally present, are no longer always coloured red. Then as we continue on we notice that although the roads are wide enough to accommodate more moving vehicles, they have been made narrower so that parked ones can be fitted along the sides, and not just in the towns. None of this would have been apparent had we chosen to use the shorter motorway route so we are delighted to have made this decision.

Finally something even stranger occurs when the language used on road signs suddenly shifts from one we always struggle with to one we are more at home with, French. Although there was no indication at all of us doing so we had actually entered Belgium some time ago but the language shift that has occurred tells us that we are now in the French speaking part of the country. More than this, buildings are no longer immaculately constructed with fine red bricks, here they are built of stone and are older too.

Strangely the biggest shift of all is part of the landscape itself, the grass. No longer is this neatly cropped wherever it is allowed to grow, confined only to places where it can do least harm. Here it grows randomly, wantonly, with gay abandon, dampening the straight edges beside the road and invading the paths where it will. Hedges too are no longer trimmed into straight lines, leading us to speculate that some of the laissez-faire of the French character has bled through into this part of the country. But sadly, gone now are the cycle paths, even the footpaths. This is brought home to us as we slow down and then swerve to avoid a lady pushing a pram along a busy stretch of road with her young child walking ahead.

Finding a well equipped campsite enables us to pause our journey, with no particular aim in mind but simply because we can. We are now amongst the hills, a mixed landscape of cultivated farmland with clusters of untidy woodland, a mixed jumble of trees still mostly bare of leaf. There are deep wooded valleys and the roads take hairpin bends so before long we find a footpath through the trees and can walk more comfortably.

Here too we encounter our first public religious symbols but as we stroll about in the chill air the light northerly breeze is a portent of what is soon coming our way. The next few days will be cold, temperatures well below freezing and snow is forecast too. Our adventure could be about to become just a little more adventurous.