Boats, Moats, and Automobiles

 Another busy day on the road! Think we might need a chill one soon with books and coffee shops instead of castles and driving! Worked our way through the rest of Belgium today and off out the other side to the Netherlands. 

The castle of the counts which has the coolest castle name I've ever come across: Gravensteen!

A very large cannon used to shoot what I only imagine is very large people

Classic Belgian canal scene - it is insane the number of canals in the middle of Ghent (although some are actually the rivers Leie, Reep and more whose names are completely lost to me)

Lovely little nature reserve by where we parked up in the night for Ghent (although lots of solid ice on the surface. Its things like this that make me wonder if we should have headed down to Spain first...?)

After Ghent there was still plenty of day left so we hightailed it over to Antwerp and cycled into the centre. In lieu of bridges we had to use the cycling tunnel under the city equipped with the only wooden escalator I've ever seen and a cool lift reminding us that we were 30 metres under the water

A classic Belgian courtyard in Antwerp: there are so many of these courtyards I'm surprised they've got room for buildings!

The Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp centre with all it's pointy, tall, and unfinished weirdness!

Off to Tilberg this evening to then make our way east through Eindhoven and finally joining the Rhine for the start of our 1,600km journey south to Naples (with hopefully a few breaks on the way!)