Adventure recorded on the blog 3

Incredible day today we went on a very incredible adventure as we say in Maltese: avventura inkredibbli. Anyways we first talked about how many kilometres that we needed to complete this adventure on to math then food and all sorts of things.

We always do a picture when I'm showing the starting number when we started the adventure.

We saw horses, chicken, lots of flies and a poor worm squashed by a motorcycle or a bicycle, but we didn't do any pictures of them.

We went from 29 - 261 - 312 - 38 - 39 - 313 - 29. It was 5 kilometres and I didn't rest once! In the middle of the adventure I fell in to some sort of spiky leaves and even right now when I'm writing this blog they hurt me. But Tonio and I thoroughly enjoyed it and you are probably enjoying our blog too. I'll see you soon.

Gianluca De Gringu

Huldenberg to Overijse and back

This weekend we enjoyed some fine spring weather with a much more comfortable temperature. It was also comfortable for insects, and occasionally we were walking through a swarm of tiny insects, which I had to wave away with my cap.

We kept going from where we had reached last week. The land changed today, from the sheltered path next to a small river, that we used the other week, into wide open plains in Overijse, surrounded by large fields overlooking the village of Huldenberg. Many of the fields were bare, having been ploughed in preparation for seeding.

As usual, we saw a number of interesting scenes. Large trees, fields and the picturesque village of Huldenberg from afar served as a background for our discussion, which kicked off with an argument about puddles and lakes.

Gianluca saw a large puddle, which he classified as the biggest he had ever seen. He asked me if I'd seen any bigger. Typically, I turned technical, and mentioned that there's no largest puddle, since the bigger the puddle the closer it becomes to being a lake. Then he asked me what was the smallest lake I had ever seen, to which, of course, I replied on the same lines.

One particular puddle was actually quite interesting. Gianluca asked about patterns he saw floating on it. The puddle was beginning to dry up. At the deeper end the water was clear. Towards the centre some patches of silt began to form on the surface, until close to the shallow end they covered all the surface. Further along there was just mud, eventually becoming dry soil. It was like a timeline illustrating the whole process of a drying up puddle. I wish I had taken a picture.

Gianluca then listed the various periods during which dinosaurs lived - the triassic, the jurassic and the cretaceous. Were there ever any dinosaurs that roamed this same spot, a hundred million years ago? I explained that this spot did not exist a 100 million years ago because the world was completely different then. Was this place beneath the sea then? Possibly.

In spite of me, Gianluca still seems to enjoy it...

There was a lovely view of Huldenberg as we made our way back to the starting place.

Adventure 2 recorded on the blog

This adventure has been beautiful there were ducks, the brilliant scenery and well that's it. At the half way point we had decided that next time we would go from 29 to 313 to 38 and 39 and so on. It was an excellent choice but I had looked on another passage. At first Tonio thought there was nothing. He didn't even think it was on the map! But then he realised that it was even better than the other passage! Tonio was really shocked.

"Actually we can go on both beautiful ways!" said Tonio. Yes yes yes. I can't wait to go on that adventure and I hope you are excited for another blog from me and Tonio. See ya.

Gianluca De Gringu

Loonbeek to Huldenberg and back

The other week we encountered several different types of animal friends. Before the start of our walk we had parked by mistake next to node number 26, and disturbed a couple of ducks' favourite relaxation spot. They were still there today, and didn't bother to move away this time.

We walked on a path next to a rivulet, from the edge of Loonbeek towards Huldenberg. We discussed the many different names used to refer to flowing water and tried without much success to classify them in order of increasing scale. There's a spring, a stream, a brook, a rivulet, a river, a waterway and a canal. We noticed that at regular intervals there were tiny streams pouring water into a bigger stream, which could be called a rivulet or a small river.

Gianluca pointed out that 'spring' has at least three meanings: to jump, the season and flowing water. I also mentioned the mechanical spring. We agreed that, in any case, there's a subtle relation between all different meanings.

Today's walk wasn't a loop. We reached number 313 and walked back. The most picturesque spot was when we had to turn back, as otherwise the walk would be too long, and we made it a point to go back there the next time.

It was a very pleasant walk. As usual. Thank you for the lovely company, Gianluca!

Adventure 1 recorded on the blog

This was a strange adventure me and Tonio walked. Though we had lots of fun we had quite a few of pictures one of them was a broken structure. It was something... But we didn't know.

Another one was when we had just started the adventure with me showing number 25 with the tip of my finger. There were three pictures with animals one of them were two horses the other two were a frog and lots of deer.

Some of the pictures were just sceneries of the brilliant views we had. My favourite picture was when I was sitting in the hay!

We had a lot of strange passages one of the arrows to lead to one of the numbers were rubbed out because the people who made all these numbers didn't want us to go near the other people's houses but we noticed it [*]. I could barely see one of the passages!

But we had lots and lots of fun and me and Tonio will write next week see you later.

- Gianluca De Gringu

* [Tonio: actually, my theory was that it was the owners of the house who rubbed out the arrow, to avoid having walkers using a path very close to their back yard.]

Loonbeek, 25 - 24 - 26 - 25

Today we set off from number 25, next to a small river at the edge of a wood in Loonbeek. We went uphill towards a high grassy plain, to node number 24, which we had reached last Sunday.

It was rather less warm and sunny than Sunday. In fact it had rained in the morning and there was always a hint of more to come, although we were lucky that it never did. In some parts, the ground was wet enough to become muddy, so that we had to resort to some "moon walking"* on a brief muddy stretch.

This was quite a weird route compared to the ones we've done in the past. The stretch from 24 to 26 was the longest we can remember, 2.5 km. It went downhill towards some houses, then suddenly it turned sharp right into a narrow path, almost as if we were entering one house's private garden. At various points the path could barely be seen at all as we walked straight between fields with planted crops. At one other point we had to walk through what seemed like the middle of a farm, with deer inside an enclosure on one side and a large shed with cattle inside on the other. Again, it felt exactly as if we were trespassing. Gianluca asked if I was 100% sure we weren't lost. I said no, but I was "reasonably confident" we were on the right track...

We saw an interesting selection of specimens from the animal kingdom today...

Deer, ponies, the cattle, and...

... this toad, spotted by Gianluca at the final stretch from 26 back to 25, next to a small river.

* Moon walking - a term coined by Gianluca to described the way we need to proceed, without slipping and falling over, when mud covers the entire width of the path. Later, he pointed out that it's not really like walking on the moon, since there's no water and therefore no mud there. But the term stuck.

Summary of adventures we had in the past

We have had a lot of adventures in the past but as Tonio my dad said he was the one who thought the idea to do these blogs although I was the one who wanted Tonio to do a journal. We've had lots of adventures, sometimes in the muddy plains where I invented the moon walking idea and it helped us step carefully to the side or in between the mud. Usually I have a stick to help me jump over the big muddy puddles like the pole in the athletics. We mostly go in bits of the countryside where everything is calm and we mostly don't go to roads where there are cars and noise. Once every while we come to a narrow passage. I love narrow passages. Tonio doesn't like dogs though. In the last adventure we met one face to face. I'm usually scared of dogs if they're up close and they bark a lot. Ugghhh I don't like dogs too unless they don't bark and they're cute. Anyway me and my dad are soon going to write a blog about our next adventure on Saturday or Sunday so I hope you will like all our adventures, though it's going to take about 12 years to do all the numbers and we are maybe going to miss 5 or 6 adventures but we will try our best to do as many as we can.

Gianluca De Gringu

Adventures in Dijleland

I'm not sure who came up with the word "adventure" to describe the country walks that Gianluca and I have started to do, usually during the weekend.

It was my idea, about a year ago, that we would start to go for country walks, following planned paths marked on a map with numbered points between the many different paths. It's organised by the Flemish Brabant tourism service. The directions are provided along the paths on little signposts with numbered arrows. There are more than 600 points spread out over a lovely region consisting of farms, forests, rivers, lakes, castles, country houses... the region is called Zuid (South) Dijleland. It's the southern part of the region surrounding the river Dijle, in Flanders, Belgium.

True to character, Gianluca had insisted that we start from number 1 and work our way up to the last one. The problem was that, at the rate we were going for our walks, once every month or so, I didn't have enough time left to live to be able to do all the numbers... This was during a walk that started in Huldenberg (picture above). So we decided to hurry up a bit, and now we're normally doing one walk every weekend. A quick calculation confirmed that I have a good chance of still being alive by the time we reach number 600 and something.

This was about 3 months ago. Since then we've come to look forward to and enjoy these "adventures" tremendously. The scenery is beautiful and peaceful, mostly away from traffic, we get to exercise our legs, we're discovering the region and along the way, which for each walk is normally about 5 km long, we discuss a wide variety of subjects, ranging from the different colours of leaves, to life expectancy from one generation to the next, to Adam and Eve and the theory of evolution, to my most preferred job if all different jobs were to be paid the same, and many other topics. It becomes quite philosophical on occasion.

One such discussion gave rise to this blog. Gianluca suggested that I keep a journal of these adventures. I liked the idea and suggested that he should keep one himself too. We agreed that we would both write our own version for each walk, and record them on a blog. I hope the comparison will prove interesting!