Tiles, hazelnuts and chestnuts in Overijse

Today it was an unbelievable day. I'm sorry but lately I have been busy so I couldn't write anything. But other than that we went over all the thirties (or at least most of them).

We saw tiles of all sorts and at the end a grasshopper but even now I'm wondering if he ate that leaf I gave him. Usually I'm right about things, and particularly in adventures for some reason, even though I'm a child... Today I was right about a chestnut, for Tonio didn't know. We found a whole lot of hazel nuts and chestnuts and as always there was a great scene.

I sat down on some very comfortable wooden logs when I was tired. We found the life cycle of the puddle the last time we went there only it was all water this time, but we had a spectacular time.

GianlucaDeGringu

Tonio's version: We confirmed today the beauty of the countryside surrounding Overijse.

 This old farmhouse is being refurbished.

 Maize, almost ready for harvesting

It was threatening to rain most of the time but, luckily, we were spared getting wet although the ground was muddy in some spots as it has been raining quite heavily the last few days. Actually, today we covered ground that we had already been to, but we wanted to 'wrap up' the 30s on the map so as to move on to another area. It was still very interesting as we saw various changes since we last were here. In particular, it's harvesting time and we picked up a good amount of hazel nuts from the many that had fallen onto the ground. We also saw lots of corn ('maize' according to Wikipedia) ready to be harvested.

Close to the end of the walk, Gianluca picked up a broken tile, from the rubble used to surface the path, and said he wanted to keep it as a souvenir by which to remember these "adventures" when he grows old.

My eyes watered...

August in Malta

August in Malta is not the ideal setting for a walk. This did not discourage Gianluca and me from going for a couple of interesting "adventures".

Fort St Elmo - Valletta

Not only was it August in Malta, it was also mid-afternoon and therefore really quite hot. We set off down a flight of steps opposite the Mediterranean Conference Centre and walked on the rocks next to the bastions that make up the perimeter of Fort St Elmo. The main breakwater of the Grand Harbour is now connected to the mainland by means of a steel bridge, and that's where we went. Gianluca didn't want to pose for a picture facing the blinding sun, so he turned his back to the camera. The result was one of my best photos ever.

He did accept to face the camera with his back to the sun... and a splendid view of the bastions in the background.

Back on terra firma, we proceeded to the other side of the peninsula towards St Elmo Bay, then up a narrow street underneath a tunnel towards the Auberge de Baviere, and back towards the Conference Centre treading very carefully on the pavement to avoid stepping on dog poop. So disgusting. They really should do something about it.

The walk ended with a well deserved ice cream / Snickers cake.

Comino

Comino was even hotter. The trip was a hair-raising ride on a speedboat from Spinola Bay. When we got there, before disembarking, we were shown some interesting features, including a cave with shimmering turquoise water as well as a sunken patrol boat, now an attraction for divers, which was just visible from the surface.

The Blue Lagoon is where hundreds of day trippers spend their day on deckchairs underneath umbrellas, completely clogging up the place. It was really, really, crowded. Our guide Ian who drove the boat had mentioned that Santa Maria Bay was a 20 to 30 minute walk away, so Gianluca and I immediately decided to escape the mayhem and seek more tranquil surroundings.

Did I mention that it was hot? At one stage Gianluca pointed the correct way to the hotel, which was an intermediate stage to our destination. We met a group of Gozitans, who where heading to the Bajja ta' Santa Marija, and we chatted and walked with them for a while.

Finally, the bay came into view.

It was also rather crowded, but much less than the Blue Lagoon. We found a shaded spot on the sand, under a tree, had a sip drink of bottled water, and jumped into the sea to cool down.

Lovely. Lovely. Simply wonderful.

The walk back from Santa Maria Bay was even hotter, characterised, among others, by a stop at the Comino Hotel for a fish and chips, a Blue Label beer and a Coke, a towel on top of my head while I was walking, as I had forgotten to bring a cap, but most of all, that most characteristic sound that says "the peak of summer in the Mediterranean". The continuous loud screech of cicadas. Gianluca actually spotted one sitting on a dried up plant and showed it to me. We went up close and the sound stopped.

Eventually, we jumped into the melee at the Blue Lagoon to rejoin our group, swam over to Kemmunett and back with Gianluca's mama, and waited for the boat, driven by our dreadlocked guide Ian, that raised our hair even more than in the morning as we speeded back to Spinola Bay.

Did I mention that it was a tremendously enjoyable day?

Overijse - 32 - June 2014

Our home town, Overijse, may have a silly language policy, but it's a really pretty place to go walking around once you leave the built up areas. Yet another walk, this one from node number 32, was thoroughly pleasant and rewarded us with some beautiful sights.

We befriended this nice chap...

... admired the cornfields,

... while discussing a thousand subjects and debating whether a particular tree, of which we were seeing many, was a hazel nut.

I googled a picture of a hazel nut leaf and compared it to a sample that we had in hand. It turned out that Gianluca was right. As usual. It was a hazel nut.

Adventures in summer 2014

Summer, with various associated travel, holidays and changes in routine, has had a heavy toll on the 'adventure' activities that Gianluca and I love so much. It doesn't mean we haven't been active, but the  normal one walk per weekend has not been happening. I hope that soon we'll resume our walks, and that we'll continue to give our accounts of them in this blog.

Following are pictures of some of our best moments this summer.

'Arbour 'arbour - Malta, May 2014

We went for a harbour cruise while in Malta in May. It wasn't a walking tour of course, but it's worth mentioning here as a thoroughly enjoyable experience supplemented with a colourful commentary, replete with hilarious sentence construction and approximate vocabulary in English.

Our boat set off from the Sliema Ferries, skirted Manoel Island into Msida Creek, then followed the coastline of the peninsula on which Valletta is built. Gianluca was actually allowed to steer the boat for a short part of the trip.

We were rewarded with spectacular views of the Valletta Grand Harbour and the fortified towns that surround it.

The main breakwater:

The Upper Barrakka gardens next to the newly reconstructed lift, that connects the port disembarkation area to Valletta:

A 'gardjola', a lookout post, adorns the outer extremity of Senglea (L-Isla):

Fort St Angelo, which guards the old city of Vittoriosa (Il-Birgu):

It was all so beautiful!

Majjistral Park

During the same visit to Malta we went to a special adventure, at a natural park situated in the north west (Majjistral) of the island.

This is a rocky area next to the coastline, with views of 3 sandy beaches towards the south - Golden Bay, Għajn Tuffieħa and Ġnejna, further north Anchor Bay and across the sea the island of Gozo. The ground was rough, dry and barren. It's a typical landscape for Malta called 'garigue' (xagħri), consisting of hard rock with pockets of red soil where hardy plants grow. Some lizards and assorted bees and insects complete the picture. Again, wonderful views...

Overijse

Back in Belgium, we managed to squeeze in a couple of walks, starting at nodes number 31 and 32. Both are close to a path with lakes on one side and a road on the other. Clearly, we were more interested in the lake:

Going up a hill after crossing the road, Gianluca stopped to study something on the ground.

It was a broken floor tile, and we wondered how it ended up there.

We concluded that dirt roads are made up of crushed material from broken down buildings. We saw various bits and pieces in the gravel as we walked. Looking up, we were rewarded with such lovely scenery.

Adventure number four

Today was an amazing day. It was a day where my wish came true. Beautiful views came showering upon us with soil that looks like chocolate, but then it became a nightmare as dozens of flies were turning round and round us like the flies were cars and we were a roundabout.

We thought about animal sounds - cats meow, cows moo but then dogs bark and they don't say bark, bark. Didn't know. I asked lots of other questions. Can any man run faster than a car? What's the smallest passage in the world? How many people, apes and all other evolutions before has stepped on an ant since the beginning of life? But we had a lot of fun and I'll see you later.

Overijse - 13 April 2014

We started close to the centre of Overijse, walked up a cobbled street that led to large open areas, then down to the edge of a village called Tombeek. Throughout the walk we could admire beautiful views of farmland all around us.

It was a long walk today, close to 6 kilometres, and hilly as well, so we became quite tired at the end. The conversation was interesting indeed. I explained to Gianluca the concept of biodegradability. We pondered on the sounds made by animals, in particular, chickens. We realised that while cows moo and cats meow, a dog doesn't woof - it barks. I suggested, without much conviction, that dogs say "Bark, bark!" but Gianluca would have none of it. We never got to work out the word for chickens' utterances.

We argued some more on whether dinosaurs had roamed the particular spot where we were walking, and I insisted that physical locations only appear to be fixed - they are actually in motion but it's so extremely slow that we cannot notice it for hundreds of years. However, going back 65 million years the lie of the land would be completely different, and "this exact spot" doesn't have any meaning that far back in time.

Terribly pedantic, I know.

Mind you, Gianluca was on fire today. Billions and trillions were flying all over the place. He wanted to know whether any human can run faster than a car, whether there's a smaller unit than a millimetre (which led us to conclude that there are a billion micrometres in one kilometre). As we sat down to rest, he asked me about the smallest object in the world. I was treading on shaky ground here. We were in the domain of subatomic particles. Electrons are very small, ventured Gianluca, correctly. I have the impression that electrons are made up of quarks, but any smaller than that I'm lost.

Another difficult question - where's the narrowest passage in the world? You mean, that people can walk through? Yes. Wild guess - Yemen.

Final bombshell - how many ants have been trodden on and squashed by humans since the beginning of time? Here I had to protest that this was totally impossible to calculate. To begin with, going back in evolution, you cannot pinpoint exactly when our ancestors could be called humans and not apes. "Include apes as well," which solves nothing since apes also evolved from something else. But Gianluca insisted, "Close your eyes and imagine you're in a quiz competing with a million others to get the best estimate." I said, "Is there anyone who knows the correct answer?" "Just imagine and give an answer!"

Ok, ok! 15 billion souls times a hundred gave a trillion and a half ants squashed by humans throughout history. Except that, I later realised that 100 ants squashed per lifetime is too conservative - about two ants per person per year. Surely, it has to be more than that.

I'll keep the pictures of today's walk for Gianluca's post, when he comes round to writing it. As I write, he's busy with his buddy Andrew, who came over to visit tonight...

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