Namur; Friday, 20 February, 2026

I had a half days leave, so after powering down the laptop I grabbed my bag and headed into town and across to St Pancras, preparing myself for the long process of getting through security and the border with the new European Entry Exit System now in place on Eurostar.

It turned out that I didn’t need to worry as from joining the checking queue to reaching the departure lounge with another French entry stamp in my passport took just seven minutes, which meant I had nearly an hour to kill before they would call the train for boarding. Thankfully my credit card gets me access into the business lounge at St Pancras, so I was able to head in there to while away the time, rather than the massively overcrowded main departures lounge.

The train started boarding on time and on the dot of 15:04 we slowly pulled out of St Pancras station. 32 minutes later we were entering the Channel Tunnel and 20 minutes after that we popped out into the leaden grey skies of Northern France, in stark contrast to the leaden grey skies of Southern England that we’d left behind on the other side of the channel.

The journey across France and into Belgium continued uneventfully and we pulled into Brussels Midi on time giving me a comfortable 25 minutes to make the connection to my train onto Namur, which started at Midi and so therefore I was able to board a good 10 minutes before it was due to depart.

We left Brussels on time, and in the pouring rain, and over the next hour and a bit we managed to lose 5 minutes time, but we also lost the rain, and what I had been expecting to be an unpleasant trudge across town in the pouring rain to get to the hotel turned into an opportunity to do a quick spot of sightseeing on my way through the city centre.

Rather than the 15 minutes it should have taken to walk across town, it took me the best part of 50, and I made it to the hotel just as the first drips of the next shower started to make themselves known.

I checked in, headed up to my room to unpack and then a little while later headed down to the hotel bar for a quick nightcap before turning in for the night.