Just say “whee”. - MONDAY 15TH JULY - NAMUR TO HUY

As is our usual form, when we set out to explore our new village, the unpronounceable (until you get the knack) Huy, “twenty minutes” walk away we had absolutely no idea of what we might expect to see.  

From long experience, our lack of research is one way of avoiding the disappointment of discovering the one attraction that we really wanted to visit is closed on the day we are there, and it gives far greater scope for surprise as we stumble around with no expectation.

Today’s surprise was the cable car spanning the river and taking passengers a kilometre or two beyond as well. 

Before one of us could say “I do love riding on cable cars”  and certainly long before we’d set foot in the village, we had conducted an arial survey of it and were exploring our second surprise of the day.

Sadly we were a bit late to visit the museum galleries of the fort, displaying the horrors of the lives of the 7,000 prisoners who spent time there in the Second World War, as well as another millennium of history but they are on our list for next time.

None the less as we wound our way down through the building, several people enquired as to whether we’d seen the pewt yet.  

We thought nothing of it, having no idea what a pewt was but it seemed to be something we shouldn’t miss.  

We were about to leave when the man on the door again asked and was quite dismayed when we replied in the negative, turning us round and telling us we mustn’t miss the pewt. 

The first lightbulb moment in this phonetically challenged day came when we saw the sign.   Ahhh not “pewt”.. “puit” (well) and a puit of uncommon size as well.   This puit was a beaut.

Why someone in the fifteenth century had decided to climb to the top of a very steep hill and dig a 90 metre hole, five metres in diameter to see if there was any water there, was not explained.   Nor was there an explanation as to how the last thirty metres were dug underwater.   

After that, we suppose that the thought of perching a chateau and eventually a fortress on top of it was a logical and relatively simple proposition, but not as simple as learning to pronounce “puit” or “Huy”.