Drive to St Bernardus Brewery, Watou, Belgium VIA Brasserie Au Baron, Gussignies, France

23-24 March 2018

With the chartered sailing trip just over a week from now, and Dunkirk/Normandy and Mont St Michael touring in between, we have to "burn" a few days to make the schedule work out in our forward progress counter-clock wise around France.  What better to do than seek out the beer again.  Gerri discovered a French brewery towards Belgium, and then worked out an overnight stay at St Bernardus brewery, with tour, in Belgium (love those easy border crossings in the European Union).

Here we arrive at Brasserie Au Baron in France.  French sourced beer, at the brewery!

Our timing was right to get lunch, and luckily the brewery had what appeared to be a nicely featured local eatery.  The workers didn't seem to do English (here we are off the typical tourist route after all).  But our restaurant French seemed to be working for us, for the most part.  Our choices were adjacent on the menu - Tim's the 15.90 Euro, and Gerri's the 10.20 Euro item.  Tim scored, Gerri not so much.  The ingredients appeared very local and country spun (good old meat and tators for Tim).  Gerri thought she could do no harm with a fish plate.  If between our limited French and her Iphone translator had worked better, she might have not chosen the cold gelatinous dog fish.  I would say these are probably two well executed versions of local fare.  Tim loved his (possibly his favorite meal in France, for lunch anyways), Gerri was a bit repulsed.  Below you see her attempting to verify that what she got is what she ordered - the waiter politely struggled to satisfy this pleading American - and Gerri decided all was correct and pressed on eating (or nibbling) what she asked for. 

I would have to say that Gerri usually succeeds in working a menu better than I, but this time the tables were turned.  Finally, I should say that this food illustrates that below the surface France is a relatively diverse culture, and given enough time we will see it more and more.  This is the food of agriculture/country France, and probably similar to what you'd find a short distance away amongst the farmers of Belgium.

After the entertaining lunch, we walked over to the brewery product store (sorta like a gift shop).  They had nicely packaged assortments of their very respectable beer.  As we were departing, the father of one of the brewers showed up, and offered us a brief tour of the brewing area.  This man spoke English well.  Whether older French people were more willing to speak the English they know or just plain have the ability younger ones don't, we can't be sure, but in the more rural areas we often found more English conversation with older people.

Continuing onto Belgium - a cool arch, and defensive emplacements from WWII.

We arrive at the former abbey of St. Bernardus, now a world distributing brewer of excellent Belgium beer.  We lodged in the buildings previously used by the monks and relaxed/dined in the cheese works building.

Below is a USA couple from Texas we just happened to discover were also staying the night.  They're looking to launch a brewery in the area between San Antonio and Austin.  There is an honor bar here with choices of all the breweries' selections.

The old and the new brewing works.

The tour, about $8 each, included a 4 bottle pack with two beer glasses, for each of us at the end - wow!

After St. Bernardus, we went back to the world renown St. Sixtus Trappist brewery in Westvlereten, along with the couple from Texas.  This was the same brewery we'd previously visited in our first tour of Europe.  And then also visited another brewery that occupied an old school house and grounds with an incredible selection of tap beers.

We pressed onto to our next lodging at an Air-BnB, still within Belgium.  The picture above with the bottle poured beer sitting on the chrome plate was offered to us at check-in.  The host directed us to a local pub to sample "Picon". 
Wikipedia:  Picon is a caramel-caramel-colored, flavored bitters drunk as an aperitif, which traditionally accompanies beer in the east and north of France.  It is made from a base of fresh oranges which are dried and mixed with a solution of alcohol which is distilled. Picon also contains gentian and quinquina in equal measures. Sugar, syrup and caramel are added last.

Here is Iris - a central character of this small village and proprietor of the local drinking hole/eatery.  We took it all in, then headed out to another place for dinner that our lodging host recommended.

Tomorrow we return to France, traveling to the Normandy region, but passing through Dunkirk first.