Road Trip ~ October 2017~ Day 3~ Waterloo~ part 2

Posted in Adventures, belgium, Fuji, fujiXT1, History, landscape, Napoleonic, photography, sunset, Travel, uncategorised, WaterlooTagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Part 1 HERE

We emerged from the underground museum to a gorgeous sunny day, so went and had coffee sitting outside of the cafe. The lion’s mound loomed above us, and a couple of times we looked at the (225!!) steps and contemplated getting to the top and decided against it!

(crapola picture here as my exposure was all wrong but I didn’t get a better one 🙄 )

But in the end I just HAD to give it a go, knowing the view would be stupendous.  Phil groaned as he knew he’d have to come with me, but we were heartened by the fact that older people than us had done it :D. We stopped a few times on the way up to prevent death, but finally got to the top!

There was a battle plan on a plinth that showed you what you were looking at

but I couldn’t really get the hang of it, and it didn’t matter to me anyway, the views WERE stupendous!

 

Then we went back down and walked down the road you can see in that shot ^ to some monuments.

LtCol Sir Alexander Gordon was aide de camp to the duke of Wellington and was  mortally wounded at his side, near the square of the 2/30th Foot at the moment of the attack of the Middle Guard. A cannon ball took away his leg. Sergeant-Major Wood of the 30th Foot transported him, probably first to the Mont-Saint-Jean farm, for some first help, and after that, to the Bodenghien inn at Waterloo, Wellington’s HQ (now Wellington Museum), where he died at 3h30 in the morning of 19 June, after the amputation of his leg. This his monument and one of the oldest on the site, built in July 1817 by Gordon’s family.

We strolled back up for dinner at the cafe, more spaghetti bolognese 🙂 and after I took a couple of shots around the place

and to finish the day nicely we saw a gorgeous sunset.

Waterloo is a fab place to visit, the town is quaint and the battle site, museums and monuments of which there are more than I’ve seen or shown, well worth a visit. I think the underground museum at Lion’s mound is my best ever museum. And I’ve seen a lot!

Full set of pictures HERE

Next time we’ll be moving on to Bastogne, so stay tooned!

 

 

39 thoughts on “Road Trip ~ October 2017~ Day 3~ Waterloo~ part 2”

  5. I recall the walk up those steps being worse than it looked, but worth the climb. When I did it, the weather was dull and uninspiring. At least you had a glorious day, and the pictures turned out beautifully too. The mound against the sunset at the end is first class indeed.
    Looking forward to Bastogne, as I haven’t visited the Ardennes battle sites.
    Best wishes, Pete.

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  7. My one and only English student was there for the 2015 re-enactment, which by all accounts was a one of the biggest as the bicentenary year, he showed me a few videos of what seemed to be organised chaos. In comparison you have brought peace and tranquillity to the area, much better.

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  15. Fraggle, this is a fascinating post. And I liked all the photos. Horsefeathers! All those stairs… Nope… I wouldn’t have tried, not even if there was a 90 year old with a walker going up them to shame me. o_O Have a thriving Thursday!

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