Today was one of the days we really enjoy when we are traveling. We saw nothing spectacular, but we will really remember this day when we look back on this trip. Our plan was pretty small for the day, we wanted to visit two breweries that are quite close to our campground in the Belgian Hop farming country. But it was the place that was not on the itinerary that made the day memorable.
Just as we were getting ready to depart Ton mentioned one other place she wanted to visit. Some time last night while I was sleeping Ton came upon an article about a small inn that she found intriguing called De Helleketel and was very enthusiastic about it. I punched it in to Maps and found that it was on the way to the first brewery, so we made it our first stop of the day.
We were driving on single lane roads with pull outs, and I was wondering what we were going to find when we came upon this really cute inn. De Helleketel means the Witches Kettle in English so we were intrigued. We arrived a little before noon and there was one couple sitting at a table with the owner Lena having a boisterous conversation in Flemish. We entered a little tentatively but Lena made it clear we were welcome and told us to sit anywhere.
Over the next few minutes several more couples about our age entered and joined in the conversation with Lena. Next to our table was an old Seeburg jukebox that used to fill all the corner taverns in the US. Lena saw us looking at it, and came over and encouraged us to pick out some music. For the next 45 minutes Ton became the resident DJ spinning 60’s and 70’s hits for an appreciative Belgian crowd.
The Belgian couple next to us struck up a conversation, they are from Leuven in northern Belgium and he is a retired policeman. What was interesting was he informed us that he was having a really hard time following the conversation of the local Belgians. He told us that this was a very old form of Flemish close to the way the language was spoken two hundred years ago. He was really enjoying hearing this old fashioned dialect and told us that these kind of places, the local country inn, were getting rarer and rarer, as were people who spoke this dialect. He kept referring to the inn as a treasure which we both agreed with.
Unfortunately, I was driving or we could have settled in for another hour or two at De Helleketel. But we enjoyed it so much we may squeeze in another trip before we head south.
Our next stop was a former Abby Brewery. The last priest retired a few years ago and the recipes and the brewery was sold to a private party but without a priest working it can no longer call itself an Abby Brewery. The beer is being brewed the same way as when it was an Abby Brewery but the owners are marketing it widely including in the US. The last time we were in the area some local people recommended we visit it as it had spectacular views. We had our lunch here and the beer and food was excellent and the dining area was sparkling and very modern. The views from the third floor of the restaurant were spectacular. We enjoyed ourselves but it lacked the down home charm of Lena’s Witch Kettle.
All of our driving was through different fields of crops on single lane roads. Luckily the traffic was light today so we could enjoy the peace of the countryside while trying to guess what some of the crops were. Except for obvious ones like corn we were both pretty clueless.
Our last stop was Saint Sixtus Abby which produces one of our favorite beers Westvleteren Beer. The monks make just enough beer to keep the Abby open, but they make very good beer. One of their beers is frequently on the best beers of the world list so the scarcity makes for high demand and people drive from all over to get a case or two of the beer.
We had our third beer of the day, (spread over 4 hours), and picked up two six packs for our trip. We then headed back to our campground in the fields and settled in for a quiet night after a memorably quiet day we both really enjoyed.