Through the Armpit. Sunday 29th July - Auvelais to Landelies

It’s true that not everyone gets a kick out of traveling through Charlerois by boat.  Some find that forty kilometres or so of derelict factories intermingled with gravel yards and chemical plants and great mountains of scrap do not make for the most scenic of cruising grounds.

Then again some people travel miles to see a pile of old rocks because it was once a Roman Wall.  Old watermills are a favourite too, no matter how decrepit when viewed objectively, yet the perception of industry in decay is that despite its history, if the scenic world were a human body, it is like an armpit.

Well today we travelled through one of Belgium’s armpits, and what a wondrous place it was.  The sky remained suitably indifferent, the wind from time to time managed to slow us to a crawl, perhaps so we could enjoy the patina for a little longer, and it was all a bit intriguing really as kilometre after kilometre rolled by.  The best bit of course was that if you trace a few bends beyond an armpit, you end up with some really pretty bits to play with, which is how we came to be moored for the night in a heavily forested gorge just above a weir not too far from the terribly romantic ruins of an Abbey.

Change is in the air. Saturday 28th July - Namur to Auvelais

Now here’s the thing: three A.M. is six hours, give or take, after sunset and three before sunrise. In his still sleeping state while en route for a wee look-around at that time, one of us thought “the edge of the storm looks pretty cool”, fumbled with the camera and went back to bed without more than half-opening one eye, nor giving any thought to why the sky below the cloud should have been that colour until much later, co-incidentally perhaps on the evening of a “blood moon”.  Had the moon dissolved?

While today’s journey was not one of great interest or beauty and we had had plenty of warning that there’d be no scenery to enjoy for a day or two it was pleasant enough.  Those who enjoy travelling in a vast concrete and stone gutters edged in forest with the occasional spot of heavy industry while being blasted by serious puffs of wind and dodging giant ships would have been enamoured.  The notable absence of a heavy downpour was something of a highlight.

It’s pretty clear that the transition from the natural beauty of the river and the declining industrial environment which we know is to come is quite a sudden one.  In a metaphorical sense we can’t help but get the feeling we watching the edge of a storm.

Hot under the collar. Friday 27th July - Namur

Just imagine how bad the weather forecaster must have felt having to tell a whole country that it would be thirty-seven degrees again today with cloudless blue skies, a mere thirteen degrees higher than the previous best for this day.  He probably felt no worse than the poor barge captain with two and a half thousand tonnes of cargo waiting to be loaded upstream while a dozen coxed fours dry roasted themselves in his lock.  

It seemed that everyone in Belgium with the possible exception of ourselves was out and about near naked, cheerfully dehydrating while concurrently burning their skins to a fluorescent red. We even saw people jogging! We, in the meantime were foregoing the pleasures of active tourism and confining our movements to the minimum necessary to move between patches of shade, particularly to patches of shade that contained tables with the prospect of drinks with actual ice in them .

It may have been something in the iced tea, but at some time during the middle of the afternoon, our plans to visit Liège on Sunday fizzled, along with our desire to climb the heights of the Citadel, or to do anything else in Namur for that matter.  We were suddenly overcome by a desire to move on, to leave what we hadn’t seen till next time.  To unpack the oars and see what lies beyond the next lock.

Cruising in the Tropics. Thursday 26th July - Profondeville to Namur

"As idle as a painted ship 

Upon a painted ocean. "

Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner knew a thing or two about searing heat and windless days, although perhaps had been on the Meuse River it may well have been a Canada Goose that he’d shot instead of an Albatros. 

“Thirty-seven degrees” declared the neon on the pharmacy nearby as we sat on the opposite bank, sipping a drink loaded with ice while waiting for the shade from the Casino or the Citadel, we didn’t care which, to engulf our little blue polyester oven.

Paradise Lost. Wednesday 25th July - l’Île d’Yvoir to Profondeville

There comes a time when a man has to do what a man has to do, and this morning was that time.   The forward berth has been a little cluttered since we set off this year with the new fenders, and with a deadline fast approaching when that berth may be required, there was no time like the present to tie them on and give the old ones a bit of a scrub.

The impact of all this productivity on a morning on which the temperature had reached almost thirty degrees by nine, was that we set off late, sweaty and not intending to go very far at all. The town mooring in Profondeville showed promise.  Perhaps we should taken the hint as we approached, weaving through dozens of hire canoes and stand-up paddle boards.  We definitely should not have ignored the monster rigid inflatable powering through them towing a giant tube with half a dozen passengers, but we figured it was nearly lunch time and they’d all go home soon.

We had figured correctly but we didn’t really expect them to return with their fathers and uncles in ski boats and wake boats by the dozen.   Wake boats are perhaps our least favourite thing in all the world, being intentionally designed to produce the largest bow wave, and produce they did, until the whole stretch of river looked to be beset by tempest.   At one juncture we cried “enough”, and slipped away for an hour or so, cruising down the river beyond their reach.   To be fair, they had mostly gone by nine, and only the stragglers were still there skiing at nine-thirty.   When calm did descend, we had time to be thankful that the new fenders had survived what is likely to be their toughest test.

Another thingy day in paradise. Tuesday 24th July - l’Île d’Yvoir

When one lives on an island, one rarely needs to travel to the mainland but we did take our little red ferry across this morning to see how the common folk were doing.  They were fine by the way. They have a bakery after all and out island does not.

So fine were they that they decided once again to visit us in their hundreds, turning up in shifts.  The first, about morning tea time were the grandparents with their small charges heading straight to the playgrounds and pools.   Later, but before lunch came the couples bent on spending something more than the two-Euros-thirty drink that comes free with every three Euro ferry ticket.   By mid afternoon the youth brigade arrived to take off most of their clothes and bomb dive and have water fights in the river while people of their parents’ age sit under trees just pretending the island is theirs.

It’s not though, it’s ours.  They go home before dinner time and we are left almost alone once again to survey our domain under a cloak of silence.  “Almost” alone because another boat is staying tonight and while we quite like the couple it brought, “almost” alone is not the same as being “completely” alone.   Now that the spell is broken, we may just mosey on tomorrow.

The Nod Monday 23rd July - Dinant to l’Île d’Yvoir

The sun made a sluggish start to the day.  It was the sort of start where the sky stayed slightly grey for a time as if holding it’s breathe before turning perfectly clear, the way a three year old does after a fall, and then when everyone is watching all hell breaks loose. 

Forewarned is forearmed of course. With a few days of temperatures in the mid thirties heading our way, we looked at our urban surroundings and silently nodded to each other.  There are a few different kinds of nods that happen between people who’ve known each other long enough not to speak in entire sentences, these nods with just a tinge of sadness about leaving Dinant: said “Let’s find somewhere in the shade”.

That somewhere was the Island of Yvoir.  Two hectares that the town’s brochures call “Paradise on the Meuse” connected to the village by a little ferry.  It turns out that it’s quite difficult to take a photograph in Paradise without looking like a person of ill intent.  While there is no shortage of subjects, there is also no shortage of scantily clad young things (too old for the playground one hastens to add) who seem to congregate in clusters like seals on a sunny rock wherever there is a scenic vista.  Averting one’s gaze (and one’s lens) is problematic as the gaps between the scenic vista seem to be filled with their grandmothers, undressed against the heat as only European grandmothers can, creating a scene with a somewhat more industrial aesthetic.  

In the early afternoon though, the playground crowd did thin to the point where it seemed safe enough to take a photo of the boat.