Pooh Pooh P'Dooh

After a night spent next to a dog's toilet in Nismes near the French border in Belgium, we had a lovely walk to the appropriately named Foundry des Chiens. Really, there was this one chap who separately walked three different dogs to the grass verge next to Dickie and each of them performed An extremely large ablution just outside the door. The aroma of steaming dog doodie wafted through the windows for the entire evening. Such a shame as the town is very pleasant and the aire is free.

No poos up here

We were expecting quite a strenuous walk this morning as the chap in the visitor's centre used the word 'uphill' quite frequently when describing it, but there were only a few small inclines and it took just over an hour. Amusement prevailed as, at one stage, we were overtaken by a little tourist train full of French tourists who exclaimed we were very brave to go 'a pieds' (on foot) in the drizzle and up these (not very) steep hills.

le petit train

The red squirrel population here is thriving as we saw several scampering around the trees. They have black stripes on their backs which look a bit weird.
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Dickie in Landrecies

We've been looking up a bit of history of the place we stumbled upon to stay tonight. Landrecies was the site of a major battle on 25th August 1914 and there is a British cemetery here which we will visit tomorrow. There are several monuments commemorating the war in the town, the church took a direct hit by a bomb, and on a lighter note they've placed a lovely aire by the canal. I just read something on the internet that said this town is where the horse that influenced the writing of WarHorse came from....how interesting.