A magnetising job came up in Ghent - a bit closer to home than Donghae - so the van was packed, and we trundled off to catch the Harwich to Hook of Holland ferry.

It was not the most encouraging of starts. Arriving in the port of Ghent, we learnt that the ship we were to be transferring cable from would be four days late...

... and the landscape wasn't improved by a break in the weather. As is often the case, a delay in proceedings gave me time to scoot off to a local museum, and Ghent didn't disappoint. There were plenty of galleries and museums to choose from.

I plumped for the Museum voor Schone Kunsten which had a wealth of Flemish and other European paintings from the early 17thC on.

'Village Lawyer.' Peter Brueghel II 1621. A satirical painting depicting the wily lawyer confounding the peasantry with piles of paperwork.

'Still Life with Ham and Bread.' Willem Claesz. Heda 1643. The cuts in the ham are particularly convincing.

'Interior of a Church.' Hendrick Cornelisz. van Vliet c.1655.

'Winter Scene in Ghent.' Pierre Francois de Noter 1838.

'A Fair in Ghent in the Middle Ages.' Felix de Vigne 1862.

'The Port of La Rochelle.' Albert Marquet 1920. One of my stops in the Hillman Special on the Monaco Dash.

'Drilling a Well.' Edouard Agneessens c.1842. I wondered if the white space on the right of the canvas indicated an unfinished work.

'Neptune's Pool at Versailles.' Charles-Francois Daubigny c.1866.

'The Master Painter.' Jan Frans Verhas 1877. I think this was my favourite. The expressions on the children's faces are perfectly rendered. Children are notoriously difficult to paint. Their skin, unlike the chiselled and time-worn countenance of the Special Builder, is often devoid of feature.

'Sunny Day.' Emile Claus 1899.

'Young Woman.' Gustave Vanaise 1901.

'Artist in Her Studio.' Alfred Stevens 1823. I have an identical easel - a much treasured possession.

'The Sambre Valley.' Theo Van Rysselberghe 1890. The blurb describes this as one of the earliest known landscapes painted entirely in the Pointerlist style.

'A Sculptor's Workshop.' Jozef Horenbant 1889. An almost monotonic palette is not easy to manipulate.

'The Strafing.' C.R.W. Nevinson c.1916. Nevinson was one of the most well-known Great War artists. After leaving the Slade School of Art, he fell in with Marinetti - leader of the Italian Futurists. He was also a friend of Wyndham Lewis who went on to found the Vorticist movement - a favourite of mine. The influence of both those movements can be detected in Nevinson's later work.

'Harbour - Opus 2.' Victor Servranckx 1926. Though Abstract art is not my thing, this one took my eye - I'm working in Ghent's harbour after all.