An afternoon in Ghent: my favourite of all cities

The news from here hasn't changed much in the past week. It's still bitterly cold, but we are fortunate that the sun is shining and that makes a tremendous difference to life. Still, going out for walks, which is something I like to do routinely, is quite an exercise in resolve because of said cold.

Today, then, we decided to make the incentive greater by going to Ghent for the afternoon. With so much lovely sunshine and the beautiful, almost bleached look that everything acquires in this kind of weather, Ghent was going to be even more appealing...and it didn't disappoint us at all. I'll keep it brief this week and let the photos speak for themselves. Needless to say, we walked along the Leie as it winds its way through the city, a route we've done so many times by boat. It is such a lovely city; I never tire of being there.

The old lock through which we normally arrive in Ghent

We've been along here by boat a few times now

Looking down on barges we've fared alongside

This was someone's bike once. It's clearly been
fished out of the water and left to dry.

Walking a route we cannot do by boat as there is a lock
that has been closed off

Looking back at the bridge

I love the shabby chic of these old houses

This waterway is alive with boats in the summer

A waffle cart in the city

Dreaming spires on an icy cold afternoon

Even in winter, the banks of the river are alive with people.
Note the renovations in progress. I'm glad to see the old
buildings being maintained

Adventures in Wifi

On our summer travels, it was very difficult to remain connected to the internet world we are accustomed to when we're at home. Now I don't mind this. Apart from this blog, which I like to keep up, I am perfectly happy to revert to a non-social media, non-browsing lifestyle and just read books for entertainment; or go for walks; or paint the boat; or....you get the idea, anyway. I love that feeling of detachment from the 'real world'.

My dearest and beloved, however, is less sanguine about being off-grid, so to speak. His passion is photography, and next to that is his passion for sharing his photos with others. Yes, even when we are in remote and sleepy parts of the French countryside and access is almost interdit (a very common French instruction), let alone impossible. Well, I shall say no more about that for fear of reprisals (haha), but I do want to tell you about some of the adventures he had in attempting to break the barriers of French internet resistance.

The man with his passion

Technically, it should all have been very simple. When in France, you can buy an abonnement for a limited period to connect with the internet by means of hotspots. In Koos' case, this was with Orange, who claimed to have something like 700,000 hotspots throughout the country. How this works, though, is not quite so easy and I hope I can explain it. There are indeed huge numbers of hotspots, but they are not in comfortable, easy locations like cafés or bars. Oh no.

When a householder organises broadband Internet at home, he/she agrees that, for a reduced monthly fee, passing members of the public can use a small part of his/her bandwidth, thus making his/her home  or premises a hotspot. There are lots of companies offering this throughout Europe, so it is nothing unusual. In the Netherlands, for example, we have KPN Fon and many others. What it means in practice, though, is that anyone with an abonnement such as the one Koos bought needs to be close to the said premises to make use of the hotspot.

Well, I think a lot of people are not fully aware that their homes might be the centre of such 'hot' attention, so to speak. So what happened was this:

Koos bought his abonnement when we were in Douai, but only discovered then how close he had to be to the nearby hotspot to get a connection. In Douai, it wasn't too bad. There was a garden bench on the road opposite the block of flats where the happy, probably unsuspecting, subscriber lived. He would trek up to the bench with his laptop and sit there uploading photos and checking in with his followers. Barring a few odd looks, nobody paid him much attention. After all, what's so odd about a man with a laptop these days? Just an oversized phone, you might say. However, when we moved up the Scarpe away from the urban world, connecting with the world proved more difficult.

Flats in Douai: which one is home to the hostpsot?

At our first stop, Koos walked into the village of Brébieres some distance from the boat, wandered around with his laptop open until he found a hotspot (as anyone would, of course), found a convenient bench (he wasn't always so lucky) and sat down. All of a sudden, life became interesting. A woman had collapsed not far from where he was sitting and was being attended to by anxious friends. She herself was cheerfully chatting on her phone when the ambulance arrived, but seeing Koos on the bench, they pulled up to him first.

'Are you ze one who called for us?' they asked, for all the world as if they were a taxi service.
'No, not me. Her,' said Koos, pointing to the prostrate lady with a smile. She was still talking and laughing on her phone.
'Oh merci monsieur.' And off they went to rescue the real victim. Koos could only imagine they saw his grey hair and beard and just assumed it must have been him, despite his calm demeanour and open laptop. A youngish woman lying flat on the ground? No...it couldn't have been her.

On another occasion, he had to sit on someone's front step to find the magic hotspot. Luckily, the house was closed up, but I cringed with embarrassment on his behalf with this one, although not half as much as I did on a later occasion at Cappy on the Somme. Once again, he was obliged to sit outside someone's house. It was early evening and the blinds were down so he felt safe that the owners were not at home. Unfortunately, though, they arrived back when he was in mid-upload.

Cappy on the Somme

Now Koos has a gift I don't have. I would have felt as guilty as a criminal even though what he was doing was perfectly legal and fully paid for. Koos has no such handicap and proceeded to explain to the bemused householders how the hotspot system worked - in fluent French. My daughter called him a silver tongued charmer the first time she met him, and I am guessing he had to bring the full load of his easy charm to the fore to avoid serious misunderstandings on this occasion. I know I would have failed hopelessly, especially in French!

As you can see, there's a bit of an actor
in my Koos - very useful on such
occasions :)

Apart from these, there were other, even less comfortable hotspots: the dodgy side street in Haubourdin where I was afraid he wouldn't come home with his laptop, if at all and the church square in Marquette-lez-Lille under the eagle eye of the Lord. Most notably, though, he had to get up close and cosy with a lamp post in Leers Noord. Yes. Can you imagine trying to explain that one? 'Yes, officer, I'm getting messages from the aliens. This lamp-post is their earthly antenna.'

So next time you see someone lurking with intent with an open laptop next to a postbox, garden hedge or shop door, don't worry...it's probably Koos. Just ask him what he's doing and experience all that silver he's capable of conjuring up at a moment's notice and enjoy it. He's quite an actor, but totally harmless really :)

NOTE: Due to the problems my readers have had with overcoming the 'I am not a robot' captcha if they are not Google account holders, I have enabled comment moderation for all comments. I'm really really sorry I've had to do this, but at least readers won't have the frustration of jumping through hoops to publish a comment. I will check daily to ensure all comments are published.

Faring home: the end of the journey

When I posted my blog last week, we were still on the Canal de Roubaix at Leers. We eventually left on Sunday afternoon; neither of us really wanted to go at all and if we'd been able to squeeze one more night on the Belgian stretch, we would have done, but let me backtrack a bit first.

Sunday dawned bright and sunny. It was a lovely morning, so we decided to make a bit of a day of it and took the Hennie H back the way we'd come to the first (or last) bridge at Grimonpont. We'd noticed some good moorings there when we were on the way to Leers and we thought it would be fun to go and spend a few hours there. It was only about twenty minutes faring, but we enjoyed the move to this lovely spot.

Mooring at Grimonpoint

Looking towards the bridge at Grimonpoint

I took a walk around and found it an attractive and peaceful place. In fact, it is on the outskirts of both Leers and Wattrelos, so mostly there are just houses there, some of which caught my eye, like these two - one so vivid and colourful and the other so classically serious:

I loved these colours!

Symmetry and classicism  - seriously

We then cycled into Wattrelos, which had some nice architectural features. I quite liked the town altogether even though it wasn't very coherent.

I loved the upper windows on this house
and the pretty balcony

Looking down a side street in Wattrelos

The Wattrelos town hall complete with palm trees
and decorative paving

Wet paving always looks lustrous. This
was just after a shower

When we got back to the Hennie H, we called the Wallonia waterways service to ask if it would be possible to go through the locks beyond Leers. Being Sunday, we weren't sure if they would do it and it was already nearly 4pm. At first, they asked if we could wait till the next morning, but shortly afterwards, they called us back to say we could do it as there were some other boats coming through.

We cast off and headed back to Leers where a crowd was at the lock to watch the action. This is always fun as we know how fascinating it is to watch boats locking through - we do it ourselves all the time.

The Walloon lock keeper was every bit as nice and friendly as our French crew and he took us through the three bridges and two locks with great good humour and friendly banter. In truth, he was too good as we were tempted to stop on the way, but he was ready for us in advance every time so we didn't have the heart to say we didn't want to go further. This eight-kilometre stretch of the system is called the Canal de l'Espierres (the 's' seems to be optional depending on what you're reading) and it is absolutely beautiful as you can see below:

Tree-lined canals like this are just so Belgian. I love them

A lovely sight. This girl stopped her horse to watch us pass

One of the classic lifting bridges on the Canal de l'Espierres

Our delightful lock assistant. What a nice man he was/is

Magnificent barns around a village church

As we left the last lock and waved our friendly Walloon goodbye, I felt a great sense of loss. This was it now. The holiday was over and our return through Oudenaarde and Gent would be all too familiar. After all, we'd done it all last year on the way south. But I hadn't taken into account that everything looks different when going the other way. Added to that, this time the weather was beautiful (it poured with rain last year) so in fact I enjoyed it to the full all over again. The Schelde/Scheldt is a lovely river. It has a sort of majesty in its remote beauty as it winds its way north and down to the huge estuary the other side of Antwerp. It also has some of the industry we enjoy seeing so much, as well as being very busy with commercial barges. Here are a few images.

Waiting at a lock on the Schelde for a big one. The barge
that came out was 110 metres long!

The kind of industry I like seeing

Industrial art in heaps

We spent the night in Oudenaarde, a classical Flemish town on the edge of the Vlaamse Ardennes, so called because it is an area of outstanding beauty with some unusually high hills for this rather flat region. I like Oudenaarde, but for me it's a real sign of being close to home. Everything is familiar and normal, unlike France, which still feels exotic in its different customs and culture. Shops in Belgium open all day, as do restaurants - just like the Netherlands, so in many ways it is more comfortable; I love being in France almost because of its differences. All the same, it was good to be there and the morning light at our mooring was breathtaking.

Morning light in Oudenaarde

On Tuesday we made the final push for home. Once again, it was lovely weather - in fact even lovelier than the day before. I had such mixed feelings heading north. The river was magical, the skies were clear with picture book clouds and the scenery was a perfect mix of rural splendour and industrial loading quays heaped with a variety of sand, coal and cement. There were commercial barges aplenty whose skippers waved cheerfully to us. 

Huge commercial barges waiting to go through the lock
at Asper

Rich reeds and greenery

A lunchtime stop at Gavere

Industrial buildings on the Schelde

In other words, it was a perfect day, but all too soon, we were crossing the Ringvaart round Ghent and winding our way through my favourite of all cities. Again the mixed feelings fought each other: the sorrow of a journey reaching its end, but the joy of being on some of my favourite stretches of water. The lock-keeper at Brusselsepoort lock in Ghent was another lovely chap who cheerfully operated the lock manually (which takes time) and seeing we had trouble getting our umbrella down, he sped off on his bicycle to open a low bridge for us (Yes...his bicycle! All the other lock assistants we've had have driven vans - even to go a couple of hundred metres. I was very impressed with this one :)). 

The lock assistant in Ghent

Approaching the lifting bridge

There's much love for the Hennie H

Our passage here is the middle of a roundabout

 And at last we were back out on the great Ghent to Terneuzen Canal. As always, I loved being on this huge shipping corridor with its docks, cranes and turbulent, choppy waters. It never fails to inspire me and I felt my spirits lift, even as we headed for home.

And back out on the Ghent to Terneuzen Canal

We finally arrived in Sas van Gent at about 6:30pm. It had been a glorious day, both uplifting and poignant, but now we've brought the Hennie H to rest after two months of fantastic faring. What a great little barge our Hennie is! We can really give thanks that she never once let us down. We had a few battery issues but that wasn't her fault and she brought us safely and happily through 930 kilometres of glorious waterways. A big 'hats off' to our Shoe for her faithful service.

So that's it, allemaal. I hope you all have a wonderful week. I will have some other news next week, but for now, our journeys on the Shoe are over for this summer. Many, many thanks to all of you who have been kind enough to read these blog posts. I am so grateful for your kind comments. I've loved writing them for you and it's been a great way of cementing my impressions. Bless you all!

Racing south From Arras to St Quentin

It's hard to know where to begin this week's blog. So much has happened and we've covered so much more ground than last week.

When we left Douai last Sunday, we said our farewells to the lovely folks we'd met there and turned right after the Douai locks to head up the Scarpe towards Arras. We'd managed to acquire the necessary remote control to operate the locks after Koos had been passed from pillar to post on the phone and eventually learned that we had to pick it up at the lock before the turning. The Scarpe proved to be a dream stretch of 24 kilometres to the end of the navigation. We loved it so much we spent two nights going up, a third night at the end and another night returning.

Info board on the lock at Douai

Through the first lock on the scarpe

 Highlights of the trip were a disused and semi -demolished China Clay factory, where Koos persuaded me to face my fear of going down steep ladders by climbing up to the old factory hall with our guitar and mandolin and recording a song there. The acoustics were amazing and it was great fun to do. When we were back on board (yes, I did it without incident) and Koos was taking photos, a security man appeared. Rather severely, he told Koos that photography was not allowed. Koos told him he understood he was doing job, but since the factory was being demolished, it seemed an odd rule to be imposing now. Mr Security relaxed, smiled ruefully, agreed and waved us on our way, for we were not going to make any other waves for him.

Leaving the industrial area at the beginning of the Upper Scarpe

The next highlight was our first and fourth nights' mooring at Brébières above the lock. It was so peaceful and really beautiful. By this time, we'd noticed how clear the water was and we could see right to the bottom. It was very weedy, though, so now and then some strong reverse action was needed to clear the prop, but we had the whole waterway to ourselves. For Koos, another peak moment was sitting in a camping chair in front of a railway bridge and filming TGV trains going past. While he did his train spotting thing (quite a challenge as the TGVs go so fast you've blinked and they're gone), I cycled to the nearby village of Fampoux and visited the WWI war cemetery where British soldiers were buried, all of whom died between 1917 and 1918. It was a very moving experience for me. So many, so young. Most of them were between 19 and 22 years old.

Brebieres lock and mooring where we first noticed
how clear the water was

Our mooring at Brebières

Beatiful, dream like Upper Scarpe

Koos watching and filming TGVs from the comfort
of the bank

At the end of the navigation, we spent the night at St Laurent de Blangy. We couldn't get all the way into Arras as the last two locks are no longer operating and the river has silted up. We moored up next to a children's water adventure centre and were hugely entertained by 'Chaos in Canoes'.  The kids were organised into a sort of rosta of activities, so every hour or so a new wave would arrive and the high jinks and fun would start again. I laughed till I cried at some of the nonsense that was going on. It was wonderfully harmless, cheerful fun and even better, not a smartphone in sight.

Chaos on Canoes at St Laurent Blangy

The end of the navigation at Arras - we couldn't get there by boat,
but I walked to the end on this beautiful summer evening.

After the Scarpe (which we left last just two days ago), we headed south to Arleux where we were going to take the Canal du Nord to the start of the Somme. Don't ask me what impulse got us though. We had to wait for a few commercials and decided instead we'd go via the Canal de St Quentin where we went last year. This time, however, we'd go through the tunnel I'd baulked at last year.  We spent Thursday night in Cambrai and Friday night at the mooring before the tunnel. What a dash through that was. 19 locks in one day was a bit much really, but the canal was as beautiful as ever. Last night we realised how far out of our way we'd come and felt a bit foolish that we hadn't looked at the map first, but heck, making beds and lying on them is something we're good at.

The Hennie H on the Canal de St Quentin (I walked along
the towpath to take this and some film footage too)

This morning then, I gathered up my courage again (remember the ladder) and faced the 5.5 kilometre Riqueval (or Bony) tunnel that we were towed through with two other cruisers. I was very quiet until we were more than half way through, and then life looked a bit brighter. It took an hour and a half, which was faster than I was expecting. It was also very cold, but then it was raining when we went in and when we left the tunnel. As an experience, it was something I am still absorbing, so there may be more on that later. There was another shorter (1km tunnel) after the long one, which seemed like child's play after the biggie.

Waiting to go in the tunnel

Leaving the light behind. Not to be seen again for 5.5kms

Now we are at St Quentin for a couple of hours (or maybe the night). We still have a long way to go to reach the Somme, which we'll be approaching from the south this time, but at least I'll be able to say I've done the whole Canal de St Quentin and all the Canal du Nord by the time we head north again.

More from me as and when I can. For now, enjoy your weekend allemaal!