The Bridge to Nowhere

Where have we been?  In Brussels, that's where.  There's plenty to distract a visitor to Brussels which is one of Europe's more under-rated capitals.  But we have the added distraction of daughter and son-in-law, Cat and Chris and (almost forgot) young Alfred George who at 10 months needs to see his grandparents!

After Ronquieres, we headed north on the Brussels-Charleroi canal and back into Flanders.  Here and ecluse becomes a sluis and the lock keepers speak English!  The town moorings at Halle looked unfriendly and a close call in a narrow stretch with one of the 1350 tonners encouraged us to continue on to Brussels.  The canal get quite 'gritty' as it enters the city and there was some tight corners.  But the industry is interesting.  Belgium uses its waterways to get waste and recycling moved without clogging up the roads.  We could be doing a lot more of that in the UK

We arrived at the delightful Brussels Royal Yacht Club in the early evening.  It's next door to the palace and claims the King's occasional patronage but we didn't see him!  There was a warm welcome from harbour master, Alain, and we dined royally in the very pretty club house.

Like several harbour masters we've met in Belgium, Alain didn't believe the length of our boat.  "No, it's shorter than that.  They shrink in this water".  This saved us around a third of the mooring bill for 5 nights and, with electricity and water included, it was a very good value royal stay in Brussels.

Over the weekend, we got in some serious Alfred time and then spent a couple of days exploring.  The trams and metro interlink well in Brussels and it's easy to get around.

On Wednesday, we continued north again, heading for the tidal Scheldt.  Lots of big commercial boats and we had to ask for several bridges to be lifted.  The one at Humbeek was odd though as there was no bridge platform.  We'd heard that there was a nasty accident earlier in the year and Alain told us about it.  Apparently one commercial passed through the lifted bridge and another decided to follow without announcing himself on VHF.  The remote bridge operator didn't look and lowered the bridge onto the boat.  The bridge came off worse and will be a long and expensive repair.  I've occasionally followed another boat through a bridge and made a note not to do it again.  A little further up the canal, I asked if I could follow a boat through a bridge.  The keeper said yes and another boat made a joke in Dutch which I think was along the lines of 'that Englishman has heard about you lot!'

Tied up at Willebreoek and checking the tides for our journey up the tidal river tomorrow.  Another adventure.

Comments

  1. Alan and Rosie19 April 2019 at 08:57

    Lovely read, people. Alfred is obviously going to get spoiled to death. Sounds a great trip so far with a valuable lesson about announcing your existence to the bridge operators.

    ReplyDelete

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