We know where we are. Saturday 11th August - Péruwelz to Peronnes

We’ve managed to travel across half of Belgium, the country that gave us Gerardus Mercator, with charts that amount to little more than road maps.  That these are the charts relied upon by most English speaking navigators and a good number of Dutch ones as well is probably an indication of how simple the task is rather than a reflection of our collective navigation skills and to be fair, we do manage to end up in some seriously pretty places.

None the less, we left our little stone clubhouse with it’s perfect replica tea-clipper interior this morning, on a mission:  We would voyage to Peronnes, where we completed our first incursion into Belgium nine years ago with Ian and Lynda.  Then we would cycle to the Fuel Barge in Antoing and buy proper chart books, the kind that are drawn to an actual scale and have grids with latitude and longitude and kilometre marks and water depths.

Given that the distance to be travelled to achieve this was something less than ten kilometres, it can come as no surprise that both missions were accomplished in plenty of time to spend at least part of the afternoon calculating what the insides of our eyelids would look like when projected using Monsieur Mercator’s theorem.