WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES - SATURDAY 13TH JULY - NAMUR

The last time we were in Namur we couldn’t understand what the fuss was about.   

Everyone we knew who had been here, was quite complimentary about it, if not raving.   As we recall, and we do, vividly, days of relentless forty degree temperatures had heated to wall we were moored against, just below the citadel, and our Joyeux was slowly being roasted along with all in her.  The town was deserted, dusty, half built or half torn down, and generally in need of a clean.  

It didn’t even have a tourist information office.

We walked and walked until the point of near dehydration, enjoyed a few hours in the citadel, but no matter where we looked we couldn’t find the slightest spark of magic referred to by others.

After that it doesn’t take much to imagine how enthused we were about getting out and about today, but the sun was shining so one of us managed a few loads of washing and a bit of a spruce up inside while cooking a batch of pikelets, and the other spent an equally industrious if not more trying morning attempting to unravel the many mysteries of the dashboard wiring.

By lunchtime the band had struck up across the river a the yacht club, the dancing had begun, the sun may have stopped shining but the world was still cheery enough for us to feel guilty about not getting out.

We never did find out what was going on in town, surely all of Belgium was there.  The streets are closed to traffic on weekends, which is just as well as there wouldn’t be room for everyone on the footpaths.

It’s cleaner, brighter and no longer under construction.  

Today at least it had a vibrance that seemed to lift the mood of everyone there.  Possibly the French beer festival in the square assisted in that regard, but we’re glad to say that Namur is now on our “must stay longer next time” list.

THE WIPER - FRIDAY 12TH JULY - AUVELAIS TO NAMUR

 

Yesterday had been a long day in conditions which required a little more work than we prefer, let’s politely say that we were feeling our age a bit when we creaked into life this morning.

It was raining too, and quite cold and not at all summery so we had a slow and gentle morning.  Eventually the other boat sharing out mooring departed, spurring us into action.

Curiously after conversing happily we thought for more than a dozen or so locks and bridges and as many harbours while travelling through Wallonia, today the young lady in charge of the locks must have decided that it would be easier for her to understand us if we spoke in English.  

It was certainly easier for us, as we are constantly in awe of how we are understood despite what we know are our sometimes unrecognisable pronunciations, which are a constant source of mirth for many (and ourselves).

Happily the windscreen wiper rebuild of a week or so ago passed it’s first significant test with flying colours, but since it covers only a very small small area of the glass, visibility in close quarters a little less than desirable.

Fortunately, after the reapairs we had thought to keep the old auxiliary system completely intact “just in case”.

ANOTHER KIND OF BEAUTY - THURSDAY 11TH JULY - SENEFFE TO AUVELAIS

What a glorious day, surprisingly hot it was too, and after travelling for far too many hours and kilometres we arrived feeling a bit like Charleroi looks - tired and terribly run down.

This may be a terrible conclusion to draw from a town which we have never visited and have only passed through on three occasions, but the fact that the economy airlines brand its airport “Brussels South” only reinforces that conclusion.

Some say that passing Charleroi by ship is not an attractive proposition, but they would be wrong.  Think of it as “Post Apocalyptic Industrial Chic”.  

With kilometres of huge piles of recycling waste glinting in the sun or floating in the air as the case may be, and factories that at first glance look abandoned, yet awful shrieks and bangs emanate from within, as once useful objects are shredded for future re-use, or perhaps they really are abandoned and aliens are rebuilding their wrecked ships within - whichever you prefer.  

It’s a super positive thing on the one hand, your old car or refrigerator being stripped to its component material, shredded and then shipped to who knows where, and there’s a kind of honesty and confidence about the place.  It is what it is.

Compare that to the cosmetic coverings of the nuclear reactor cooling towers we spent a couple of hours with while waiting for a lock.  Their glistening while forms and water vapour rising above silhouetted against the blue sky belie all sorts of potential catastrophe lurking within.

At least that pile of cubed cars is unlikely to suffer a meltdown at its core, which is more than we can say for the reactor, or for that matter for us if we’d pushed our day much further.  

UP AND OVER - WEDNESDAY 10TH JULY - MONS TO SENEFFE

It may look like something from a Star Wars set, but just because they built a taller one in China doesn’t make the Strépy-Thieu boat lift any less impressive. To get a better idea of scale, look closely at the lower road and find the tourist train.

It’s certainly a very easy way for us to climb to the top of a hill using only a boat, and something of a monument to engineers and of course to a certain Mr Archimedes, without whom the calculation of counterweight sizes would not be possible.

There are lots of facts and statistics that are very easy to find if that’s what floats your boat, the least of them or perhaps the most important depending on your perspective is that the height of the lift is seventy-four metres, and that the vertically moving watertight gates are designed to withstand a 5 km/h  impact from a 2000-tonne vessel.   

This is only reassuring until one starts to wonder about the consequences of a 2010 tonne vessel failing to stop while the basin was at the top.    There is a flood gate a few kilometres away which would stop Belgium emptying completely, but the thought of ships both small and large plummeting over a seventy-four metre waterfall and tumbling through flooded towns below is an entertaining one, if one isn’t a passenger on one of those vessels at the time it happens.

Anyone wishing to visit can ride the lift for a nominal fee,  and there’s a little train ride and a ferry too which would ask for a couple of other nominal fees but pleasure boats, presumably because they are part of the attraction are not charged at all.  

Therefore it would make a certain amount of sense for those more than mildly curious, to track us down next time we are passing and we’ll be happy to provide the thrill of a lifetime.  

CITY OF COLOUR - TUESDAY 9TH JULY - MONS

It’s a curious thing to hop on the bus after a lovely day in town, a super lunch in the sun drenched main square, and sufficient heat to believe that summer has finally arrived, to receive a notification from the weather man that says “Thunderstorm will cease in eighteen minutes”.

The sky was a bit overcast in places, but there was not a drop of rain to be seen. Perhaps it was a wrong number.

Ten minutes later we alighted from that same bus with the sky a little greyer perhaps, but still giving no sense of impending doom, and we set off on our eight minute walk back to the boat.   The bus had barely closed its door when a drop of rain the size of a cumquat landed on the concrete pavement in front of us.    

Then another.

We had just enough time to fish our umbrellas out before firehoses started blasting us from all directions, leaving us beyond wet, walking through inches of water.  Traffic stopped, we think the street lights came on, but we had to squint against the pressure of the water so can't be sure, yet on we trudged.

Precisely eighteen minutes more or less after receiving that notification, just as we were wondering how to get into the boat without filling it with water, the rain ceased. 

Fourteen millimetres in around ten minutes made us a bit homesick.  I’d managed to get the (thankfully waterproof) camera safely zipped into the backpack just in time, but such was the torrent that when it was all over, it was basting in an inch or so of water which had found it’s way through the zippers!  

Again I digress: Mons is a really nice city we think, filled with colour and interesting crannies, that could well do with further exploration.  One laneway was so colourful that all the cobbles were carefully painted in colours so vibrant that it felt like walking across a packet of Smarties.   

I can only hope that the colours haven't run!

THE DAY WE WENT TO SWEDEN - MONDAY 8TH JULY - PERUWELZ TO MONS

With no obstacles on our route we could probably have put the pedal to the metal and been in Mons for smoko, but that’s really not how we roll.  We did make it in time for lunch and by the time we’d done nothing, and had a chat with the Port Captain, the afternoon had been well and truly underway for some time.

We’ve not visited Mons before, and were recently made aware that the Vikings had settled far and wide in the sixth century or so but we were quite surprised to discover that one of the remnants of the Swedish scourge remained just a few kilometres away.

Navigation on foot turned out to be a challenge as we had to pass below or across no fewer than eleven lanes of freeway traffic on the way, with pathways so bio-diverse that jungle greens and a machete might have been appropriate.  For a time it seemed far safer walking on the road’s edge than battling with the nettle and blackberry and other spiky things including a bush that looked for all the world like the invasive species we called “Chonky Apple” when we were kids in the north of Australia. 

That particular name must be some sort of woke faux pas now, as a search for that plant turns up “Chinee Apple” which to this not quite objectively focused pair of eyes, seems to have greater opportunity to cause offence, but once again, I digress.

Eventually we made it to IKEA safely, having managed to steer one of us away from the temptation to pick a large bunch of wildflowers on the way : “we can do that on the way back”.

There, we quickly found everything on our list, stopped for a close to awful coffee and a less awful slice of apple pie, bought a very small flowering plant to match the time we will be on the boat this year, and made our way happily back the way we came, leaving the wildflowers to live another day.

SMELLING THE ROSES - SUNDAY 7TH JULY - TOURNAI TO PERUWELZ

Sunday is a funny day on the water in Belgium or at least in Wallonia.   

In the absence of almost all commercial traffic, the waterways staff seem to work a sort of “casual Friday” kind of day, stopping for lunch and appearing to not do too much at all.  

By eight, when we woke it was such a glorious morning that we were at sixes and sevens as to whether we’d even bother moving.   By nine, we’d decided to stay for one more day.

At twenty past nine, we cast off to try our luck with the last two large commercial locks we need to negotiate for the next few days.  

Since no one really wants to move fourteen million litres of water just so a boat that displaces barely six thousand, can move twelve metres upwards, there’s a policy of doing nothing unless three boats are present per lock movement or if no-one else turns up there is a maximum of approximately two hours to wait "just in case".  Naturally this is flexible because, well, even the waterways guys have to eat, and while we were really lucky at the first lock, the crews of the three boats who had already been waiting for almost three hours when we arrived were delighted to see us.

In any event, we had a very gentle day bobbing around waiting to the sounds of Mr Perkins throaty idle.

By mid afternoon we'd travelled a very slow (even by our standards) twenty- five kilometres or so, and were nicely settled into a pleasant little corner in the port of Peruwelz.  

There we whiled away the afternoon, wandering through the nettles and blackberries where once mown pathways lay, and generally admiring the wondrous biodiversity which we suspect was more a result of neglect than deliberate policy, but it works just the same.