The big stuff that you don't see on Twitter

These days I spend quite a lot of time on Twitter. I'm not very good at keeping up with threads and conversations because I usually have to go off and do other things - like work just as a for instance - and I lose the plot quite often, which can be pretty funny at times. But I love Twitter for all sorts of reasons: the banter between the lovely people I follow on one of my lists, the photos and chats with folk in Dorset, my pre-South Africa home, on another list, and the things I can share with the English boating community, which I have as another list again.

I love this last group because I can see photos and videos of the gorgeous English canals. Tonight, for example, I had a brief chat with a woman who has her narrowboat on the Fens, country which is remarkably similar to the Netherlands. However, what passes as navigable canals there would just be drainage ditches here and no one would dream of boating on them. Our canals in Holland tend to be much wider and more serious, used as they are for commercial traffic. However, we can go from the sublime to the ridiculous in that sense. There are a few small canals. We did a trip on one of them in the Vereeniging some years ago, which I wrote about in Harbour Ways. And there are others in the area known as Westland, which only small boats and cruisers can use - but certainly not barges like the Vereeniging.

One of the few small navigable canals
in the area

Mostly, though, it's the big stuff here and that's no exaggeration. The huge network of major rivers that starts in Rotterdam means we have enormous container barges - sometimes coupled together - heading upstream into Germany, France and even Switzerland.

The sea canal is lined with industry from the coast to Ghent

 Added to that, the Westerschelde estuary gives access to the huge sea canal that makes it possible for massive sea-going transporters to get all the way inland to Ghent and Antwerp in Belgium. I love to watch these monsters sailing across the landscape. They look far too big to be on a mere canal. And often, because they are so huge, they are pulled by tugboats to keep them on course. The sight never fails to impress me.

Muscular tugs pulling a sea-going vessel

Impressive in their own right

Just a tad bigger than a narrowboat

So this is the contrast with the world I enjoy viewing through the images my narrowboating contacts place on Twitter. Half of me would love the tranquillity of doing what they do and never having to worry about the big commercials like these. The countryside is perfect; the small hump-backed bridges are quaint, and even the locks are beautiful. But the other half of me would miss this; these great sea ships that smell of far-off lands. There's nothing quite so exhilarating as being out on the canal in your little boat and being overtaken by one of these. You really feel you are part of a thriving waterways network - the arterial lifeblood of Europe - and not just on a route for pleasure boaters.

All the same, Twitter gives me a taste of that other life, the gentle, relaxed world of the sleepy English canals, and yes, one day I'd like to try it for myself. Luckily, I now have enough Tweeple and #boatsthattweet to ask where to go and get the best routes and trips…thanks to the fantabulous world of Twitter.

There, I bet you never thought I would combine a post about my boaty life with the social media world. 'Tis amazing what you can do when you know you have to get a post out and don't really have a clue what to write!