We were all bluff and bravado when we set out yesterday, unsure of just how we’d fare in our rather modestly powered craft if we actually got the timing wrong, but we didn’t and we wasted a few hours of just the teensiest bit of angst, and even managed to travel at an average speed (just) into double figures.
Today, all we had to do was leave at the bottom of the tide, and we’d ride it like a surfer on some great tsunami all the way to Gent. That’s what they all said at least.
Therefore, we left with expectations of twelve or fourteen kilometres per hour on the speedo, and perhaps even a micro rooster tail flying off our stern (the latter is a physical impossibility, but that really is the sort of journey we were expecting).
Alas, they were wrong.
They’d forgotten to mention it had been raining all summer and rain by its very nature flows down hill after wetting everything, swelling rivers and increasing their exuberance. In this case the exuberance was sufficient to almost cancel out the incoming tide, leaving us to travel uneventfully for several more hours than planned albeit at a slightly higher velocity than is our norm.
When travelling upstream like this, we choose to do so on cool days, in overcast,calm grey, perhaps with just a hint of mist, all the better to bring the coloured highlights out of the photographs we take, which is fortunate, because that’s exactly the conditions we were given all day.
What a difference a day makes.
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