Nearby Winter Wonderland

Just a few miles south of here is the ruined Villers-la-Ville abbey, which just turned 800 years old. It was the largest Cistercian abbey in all Belgium, at one time housing 300 monks. It was later ransacked at least three times by invaders from three different countries. And we think today's tourists are hard to handle!
In summer they put on concerts and even opera in the "back yard," but we are a long way from that now, both calendar-wise and temperature-wise. It hasn't gotten above 35 degrees in our area for over two weeks now and we see the sun...well...uh...never, or so it seems. (These pictures were taken exactly a year ago).