What with the "loss" of last weeks log, an inability to upload through Belgium Orange, and so much going on, this week is a bit scrappy.   Perhaps now we are - relievedly - back in France, things will improve.

Dienze to Gent River Leie

Late start from Yacht Club due to overnight activities.

Extreme reluctance on behalf of anyone at the club to acknowledge our existence at all.  Probably the most unfriendly set of people met on the waterways so far! Perhaps they felt ashamed of the behaviour of their fellow citizens.  Don’t see why, far worse happens in England!

Received furtive nods from 2 or 3 people as we pulled out, as if they didn’t want big brother to see them being friendly to the horrid Brits who had called the police down to their nice club.

Had decided that, in view of dreadful weather, and motorway like canals, that we would not enjoy thrashing Albert at 7.5 kms per hour for 6 to 8 hours a day to get to Bruges, Newport, and the coastal canals, seeing little or no scenery on the way, and probably unable to stop and visit.   As the current trip clearly was not, and showed no likelihood of being, fun, there was little point in continuing as we were.

Therefore, decided to go up to Gent by the river Leie - well known as extremely attractive, spend 2 or 3 days there, and return to France by the Dender canal in central Belgium.

Run from Deinze to Gent "Ringvaart" (circular canal surrounding Gent, removing commercial traffic from the city) quite delightful, and everything it had cracked up to be.

Slow flowing river, no wider than the upper Thames above Oxford, and very like the lower Avon - intimate and friendly.

Waterway very busy - busiest waterway we have ever been on, but everybody friendly and driving with care and consideration - especially as due to our low speed, we always had a convoy behind us. It was great - in many places like the Thames, apart from nice views across fields, one could see the top halves of boats sliding along to be met and passed in 10 minutes.

A very, very pleasant days run - lunch tied up to some club's - rather light - visitors pontoon.

Into Gent, and creeping through city - we had 3 maps but none of them agreed with the other, and nor could we make them fit the ground or the ground fit them. However, we eventually found some moorings which we calculated were the ones in the suburbs, so passed them to look for city centre. Swing bridge straight ahead too low for us, and not a sign of anyone to swing it and bridge beyond too low as well. Tee junction to right looked good, but narrowed to within a few yards to less than Albert’s length.

Went a short way down - there were occasional boats tied to road railings - lost nerve, and backed right out - Albert behaved beautifully, keeping almost dead straight for 150 metres. Lady on pathway suggested - in English - we stayed put on the moorings we had just passed - we were already slap bang in the middle of Gent anyway.

She - Ruth, with Peter, came from a Brit cruiser moored up, so we moored up, found electricity in box where most outlets were padlocked (apparently, all outlets not in use in the evening are locked, so it is necessary, if you want power before "harbour master bod" comes on duty at 1900 to find an outlet vacated by someone that morning - the "official" mind! By the same token - the water is turned off, except when HTB decides to turn it on!).

Quick cycle around centre part of Gent, lots of visitors, but being Sunday evening, Tourist Office closed. Cycled round a bit to have good look, but - possibly due to tiredness (lack of sleep last night), hunger, and the extreme roughness of the cobble on the little wheels of our Bromptons, not as impressed as we were later.

Returned to boat, and singularly nasty piece of work - male, elderly, signaled us to go with him. Felt as though a cross between Hitler and a poison dwarf was taking me somewhere nasty. There in a rather grubby permanently moored peniche, an equally nasty female - demanded - virtually with threats - 15€ - the night's to come mooring fee.  Couldn’t see what the problem was - but there obviously was one - could it have been that we were "English", and only communicated in that language, or French? Getting the impression that opening a conversation in French is very unpopular.

To bed - wondering about Belgium.

In Gent.

Railway tickets cost 2.50€ return for the pair of us.

We carried the Bromptons onto the train (rode them through the booking hall) at no charge. Were rushed by a lady official onto a "fast" train at Gent. It was - 15 mins, but also full, so we sat on the bikes at the end of the carriage. Train back empty!

Picture of "bike park" at Bruges Station.   Bicycles seem very much the thing in Belgium - more even than France.   Most roads and streets we rode on had bike paths.   The actual bikes were fascinating.   As there are no mountains in Belgium - it really is totally flat - there are no mountain bikes.   The favourite machine seems to be a large wheeled (to cope with the cobbles?) sit-up-and-beg old fashioned (to our eyes) sort of thing.    There are millions of them!   The noisy scooters do not seem part of the lives of the youngsters here, though.

Bruges fun, pretty, clean, but desperately touristy, and crowded out with them.

Visited city moorings - not very big, and just jetties at side of an internal canal. Not really very jolly, although highly adequate.

Enjoyed Bruges - (had to queue at Info office to buy .20€ street map!) but still very glad we went.

In Gent

Still cool and overcast.

Spent morning domestic shopping, getting a new set of ignition keys cut - 2 out of 5 aren’t available in Belgium, the other 3 cost 20.00€!

Back to boat for lunch, discovered fridge totally iced up, so de-frost vital at once to get new shopping in.

Shout from roadside - Steve (Herself’s Brother) had both found us, and arrived.

Lots of gossip in afternoon, then lit out in his car for cross-country drive through countryside to ask L.K. at top of Dender canal if his canal was open right through Art to Pommeroeul. It is marked in literature as closed in dry summers, and as this summer has been so strange with floods in East Europe and drought in central France, be as well to find out for sure.

We are planning route home - down the motorway type but much shorter Escaut, or the heavily locked but avowedly pretty Dender.

Found - after finding no countryside - lock at Dendermonde, the top lock - and ginormous with a guillotine gate at both ends.   Presume it depends on relative river and canal levels as to whether one goes up or down, so both are catered for.

L.K assured me he could speak nothing but Flemish, and was not really interested in any problems I might have, anyway!   "How do I know whether it will be closed or open next week - I don’t know if it is open now".  Extracted info that they had problems further down due to too much water - not drought.   Language used to communicate - my version of Africaanse.

Back on country roads, but still no real country - bit like home counties, seedy and built up.

Out to superb dinner, with quick general site seeing on way. Previous impressions of Gent - probably coloured by weather, hunger, tiredness, lack of real interest and helpfulness at Tourist Info office moderated.

Gent to Berchem-Kerkhove, BovenSchelte

Lit off to return to France as soon as Steve left.

Very long day - grinding down enormous wide canal with and against 2000 tonners going like the clappers. Coal sand and containers, were the visible loads, also tankers - and they went really fast!

First lock (all the locks on this canal are 125 metres long by 14 metres wide, Albert is just short of 15 metres long by 2.1 metres wide.) total false sense of security and ease - we went through on our own!

Received superb treatment at next 2 very large locks - called forward to fill small available space far in front of turn by peniche skippers.

Weather overcast, grey, dreary and cool.

Countryside flat, bushy, mostly invisible behind canal banks.

Moorings few and far between on these big commercial canals, so were enormously relieved to find this one actually existed. Dreadfully run down - broken jetties right under mill and silo, but electrics worked!

Paid 7.50€ quickly, and settled in - dog tired and relieved. But what an apology - if that is the right word - for a pleasure boat mooring.

Berchem-Kerkhove to Antoin, BovenSchelte

Warm, mildly sunny, and extraordinarily pleasant.

Tried for bread in village - totally dead! Spar that didn’t open till 0830/09000, so foxed on that one.

Motored happily on down an empty - but huge - canal to Spiere where mooring marked. Sure enough, found it on concrete wall with no protection from peniche wash, but with a .50 cent slot machine electricity. Judging by spiders webs on connectors - hadn’t been used for a long time - a very dangerous and stupid place to tie up to, anyway, on the outside of a bend. Shot off on Brompton mounted bread hunt. Village very nice, clean, tidy, but appeared to consist only of 30 to 40 houses, a large oil terminal, a large motor sales outlet, and a large and very fine butcher. Asked her about bread, and was offered a single sliced loaf in a bag sitting on counter. Took it with alacrity.

Had a quick look at a touristy museum cum history of the water affairs of the region. Immaculate, although we didn’t actually learn much from it.

Canal itself very dull - land flat as pancake, high canal banks and very wide waterway, but interest and excitement and tension at locks more than made up for that. As said yesterday, locks on this canal are 125m long and 14m wide. There is lots of traffic, and boats are either 39m X 5.05, 44m x 5.50, or 75 to 85 metres x 7 to 8 metres, capable of almost 1500 tons. Haven’t got that totally right, as many of the boats do not have their size and tonnage painted on them, as perceivedly required, especially some of the very big ships, that occupy the whole lock on their own with just a few metres at each end, and one side left over. However, everyone, except us, knows every possible combination of boats, and it appears the LK just opens the lock, gives a green light, and the first, and then all appropriate boats - be it 1, 2 3, or 4 or doubles go in, and if there is a corner for Albert it is up to us to fill it - quickly. - even if that means jumping the queue - just get on with it.   The pic shows - apart from a guy hosing his boat - that the boat is 80m long, 8.27 wide, and carries 1349 tons.    They are big!

During this day - sometime - cannot remember when as we didn’t stop - couldn’t stop - for lunch that we left the Walloon Province of Belgium, who charged us 50€ to enter at Menin last week. Called to lock cabin to "show papers" - as were all peniche skippers, thus causing yet another hold-up. They were incredibly good humoured about it - indeed they seemed to be incredibly good humoured about everything. Up I went with the 50€ we thought we would probably have to pay, and was charged 1.87€ alto-gether! Wouldn’t have thought it worth stopping the traffic for.

Noticeable that quite a lot of the big commercials are complete family homes, with playpens on the decks, and cots in the wheel-houses. Also noticeable that - like us (!) the wives drive into and out of locks while the men do ropes and things.

It also appears that it is necessary, for good penich skippers to have piercing whistle for attracting attention of wandering narrow boats, strong voice for comments like depechez vous, and strong arm muscles for waving at said narrow boat.

As we came down - unfortunately, because of our slow speed, even the fully loaded ships with the gunwales awash overtook us - we met new people at each lock. However, a lot of them seemed to be English speaking Dutchmen, and we like to think we soon got the hang of it (locking, not the Dutchmen). We quickly discovered that no one gives anyone marks for hanging about looking uncertain and saying what shall I do, and fewer still for being in the way!

It has to be said, we were quite extraordinarily lucky in all the skippers who let us share their water! On this canal they all - skippers and LKs alike - seemed to be highly professional.

Enough lecturing - it will be seen that a boat of 15 tons, and top speed 7.5 km/h sharing waters with 1500 tonners capable of 15 km/h was a major adventure to us. The only factor we could possibly win on would be aggregate age of all parties on board each individual boat.

As before on these canals, finding mooring up for the night is sweaty as the places marked are few and far between - further than the 30 to 40 kms a day with, say, 3 locks, that we are capable of.

Here again we were lucky - everywhere we found was, at least, safe from large boat wash and heaving, although a mite seedy. In this case looked for mooring marked, but found it was several kms on through at least 1 lock on a canal we didn’t want to go down, and it was 1800, so back to Antoin - huge heavy industry, huger ships discharging coal, all overlooked by fairy tale castle.

Found a little bend, where canal had been straightened, leaving a little island and shelter from the wash of passing monsters. Wall far too high and surroundings very ordinary (within 100 metres of village, but they hardly fish at all in Belgium), but made plan, and set out most complex tying up arrangements yet so that boat couldn’t move whatever happened, and wheel fenders forced to stay put without drifting into the recesses in the sheet piling regardless of disturbance.

Worked well, and by the time we stopped there wasn’t that much traffic, but there was no way we were going to get away scot free. The shower pump-out packed up. It has been playing up for some weeks, would just stop, but found that if the pump was given a good bump it would start again. Rigged a string through the floor, so that every 3 or 4 days when it played up, a couple of good tugs on the string got it going again. (The pump is not screwed to the floor, but to it’s own independent mounting plank, so can be moved). Regrettably there is nothing so permanent as something temporary, and we had done nothing about repairs or replacement!

Taped up outlet plug hole in the shower, and now compete to see how little water can be used so that baling and sponging out are kept to a minimum.

To bed - clean but cross!

Antoin to Denain.

We are still - just - in Belgium.

All boats can buy and use pink - duty free - diesel in Belgium (.415€ per litre as opposed to .75€ to 1€ in France. We are allowed by French authorities to be in France with red diesel in fixed tank, provided we have a receipt showing how and where we bought it. Found a flip side - have 2 cans of used engine oil on board, and disposal points are very few and far between on waterways. So asked bunker if he would take them - yes, but he would have to stamp our book!?!? It appears that we should carry an official book that shows purchases of new engine oil, and disposals of the used oil. Gave up, and continued to carry it about.

Bunker ship just below our mooring, so went in to see if he would supply such a small quantity of diesel as the 70 litres we wanted. Yes, and yes he did have some Jabsco pumps similar to our shower pump-out.

Shot up to village for cash - bunker is not keen on cards unless one takes the more normal amounts of several hundred litre drops - backed Albert down and filled up, and got pump.

The pump is actually a water supply pump - that is it has a pressure switch which starts the pump running if pressure in pies drops as when opening a tap - however, surely a plan can be made - worth trying, there is no-where else this side of St Jean de Losne we will fin a pump.

Off we went on the most boring morning’s run imaginable. 14 kms - or was it 140 or just 1.4 - kms of dead straight canal - dead flat country with nothing on it. Greatest excitement was to see how close we could take the boat to the seagulls sitting on the marker posts before they flew off. Very shallow, as well, so felt - and looked - as though Albert was going up hill all the way.

At the end of this locks started again, and mixture was as yesterday - thrills, no spills, lots of tension, and necks and eyes swiveling fit to twist off.

Noticeable that there were always lots of commercials around locks and at charging and discharging jetties, but passed relatively few on passage. Does this mean that the greatest part of a commercial boat’s time is spent waiting at locks, and to fill and empty, or are there, in fact, too many ships for the available cargo?

Found sheltered moorings on wall of barrage mouth, parallel but out of reach of entry into lock. Bollards, high walls, no facilities, except some grass and trees, and lots of peniches of all sizes moored up. Would have loved a photo of Albert moored up for night between 1500 tonners.... Probably a regular stop for them, maybe they were staying for week-end.

Pipex on the blink - nothing going in or out - seems to be more or less continuous - how can anyone have any .personal pride in providing such a blatantly and obviously poor service?

Denain to Basin Rond l’Escaut.

Woke late to dull drizzly day so typical of this summer.

Seems moorings successful - 2 giant ships left more or less at dawn, no-body else had moved before us, and we had quiet and peaceful night.

Fancy 180 degree turn out of the barrage mouth, and away on the last stretch back to our sort of canals.

Only 1 lock, and that we had to ourselves! Once again, "papers" please. Have these people learnt too much from the Belgians?

Comfortably into Bassin Rond for lunch - thus completing the "into Belgium" circuit.

After lunch set too to try and clean boat. Continuous wet ropes, wet people, wet and dirty lock walls have played merry hell with a formerly neat and tidy Albert.

Major clean, oil change, and guess what - once again found our Internet Service Provider "Pipex" on the blink. What a shower they are - 30 minutes on the help line from a mobile overseas, and still no answer - although one is through, being held in a queue. Got through eventually by changing to another base station - remember this happened last year, as well. Expect they are going into liquidation - serve them right - but what a nuisance to us.