My sister and niece have been staying for a few days. Belgian chocolate, ice cream and chips have been a hit. Holly is particularly impressed by the idea of chocolate sandwiches for breakfast, though she feels the bread is an unnecessary complication.



Jo requested art galleries, which is a bit of a problem as there aren't any in Leuven. There isn't even a museum at the moment, thought it's due to re-open in September.

What Leuven does have is a lot of public art, so we hunted out some of the statues, pausing at a cafe every couple of hours to warm up and dry out.

We had hired a car for the weekend, which was fortunate, as we need to check up on Rusty every day until we're sure the leak has stopped.

For Valentine's Day we went to have a look at the countryside around Leuven. It started off well, with a road through ancient forest, then a visit to St Camillus, the Psychiatric branch of Leuven University.



After that it got pretty boring. A lot of newly built housing developments, and neat unpicturesque farmland. There were a few older towns and villages, but I was too nervous to work into the centre. I haven't driven for a year, and that combined with giving way to traffic from the right, and bicycles from anywhere, was giving me a nervous breakdown.

The most interesting part was dipping in and out of French speaking territory, with the associated change in signs and place names.

Went to check on Rusty. Switched on the lights in the engine room, and had one of those "I can't work out what I'm looking at" moments.

There was water right across the engine room floor - nearly over the fuel tanks, and certainly over the bottom of the engine.

AAARRRRRRGH!!!

So the rest of the day was spent getting all that water out. Over that wide an area it takes a lot to just drop the level by a visible amount.

After about an hour I was sure it was going down, so I calmed down enough to take this picture. The black line is the level when I discovered it.

3" of snow and night time temperatures under -10C. Happy New Year.

Leuven at Christmas time.