Taddy Tales

Dinant is beautiful.  Absolutely gorgeous.  A wonderful old town stretched out about 2km long by 200m wide as it squeezes between the river and the cliffs.  There's a castle, lovely houses and lots to see and do.  Aldophe Sax, inventor of the Saxophone was born here and the town celebrates with giant sax statues everywhere, each painted by a different country.  Loads of tourists turn up every day and wander happily around.  And here we were, moored right in the middle.  We liked it so much that we stayed 3 nights and spent a lot of time just admiring the view.  We were moored by a large statue of Charles de Gaulle and that got us investigating.  In August 1914, the German army came down the pass in the cliffs to cross the river.  They had just decided to ignore Belgian neutrality and were passing through on their way to France.  But the French army were there to defend the bridge including a young Lt de Gaulle who was injured do...

Namur is an impressive sight but only because it sits on the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse, one of Europe's great rivers.  As we passed the last bridges over the narrow Sambre, we emerged onto a great vista with a wide river and an impressive citadel above us.  Turn left, downstream and we head 344 km to Rotterdam where we joined this mighty river last year just before it flows into the North Sea.  In the Netherlands, it's known as the Maas and we cruised it all the way to Maastricht then.  But our plan was to turn right and head upstream almost as far as you can into France.  That's another 319 km. We had other thoughts in mind.  We were expectant grand-parents and we needed to get ready to leave the boat and drive to the UK when called.  It was early but we always like to be prepared.  Our car was way back on the other side of the country and a 2 train journey via Brussels was needed to collect it.  We also had stuff to fix a...

Monday morning.  New week, new water.  We were heading south again on the Brussels - Charleroi canal.  That meant cruising through Charleroi which has something of a reputation for being challenging - narrow, no moorings and lots of big commercial boats. Oh Goody! It started well with some nice countryside.  We stopped outside a supermarket to stock up.  We needed a ladder to get up to the quay but at least we could wheel the trolley right back to the boat.  Plenty of beer (and some milk) was taken on board. There were some big commercial type locks to tackle.  We were kept waiting at one whilst some sort of work took place.  The radio conversation in French was a bit confused and a commercial boat came past and leaned out and said exactly the same thing . . .  We followed him and that went well until he was heading into a lock with a green light and notice that the lock keeper had forgotten to open the gates.  He went hard astern an...

We were back on the unhappily named 'Canal Nimy Blaton Peronnes' which simply lists the places it goes to.  And, for the first time, we were retracing our steps, having got back to where we were several weeks previously before our loop up to Brussels. We stopped for the weekend in a handy 'Grande Large' (lake) where there was nice mooring and entertainment from hundreds of swallows.  They were there for the large buggy things that were hatching out and covering the boat! Monday dawned, or seemingly didn't.  The lake was shrouded in thick fog and we could see nothing at all.  It was only a few hundred metres to the canal but there's big 3750 tonne ships out there.  So, we checked the navigation lights and sat tight until it started to lift.  That took a couple of hours but we were soon cruising in brilliant sunshine. We passed a rather odd English boat towing a milk crate.  He didn't answer my radio called and steered into a group of anglers whe...

One really odd thing about Belgium is how the generally invisible border between Flanders and Wallonia is made stark by language.  One minute you're following road signs in Dutch and then a 'welcome to Wallonia' sign flashes by and the name of your destination changes completely.  For example Geraardsbergen sits in southern Flanders and everyone happily speaks dutch (and english).  A few kilometres on and they ask (strictly in French) if you came from Grammont. The River Dender changes name less dramatically, becoming the Dendre as you cross the non-border.  But the lock keepers change and french is suddenly compulsory having been banned 5km previously.  The Walloons are more laid back than the Flemish and they seem to have a rule against lone working that means a lock keeper doesn't do anything until his mate turns up (in a different van).  There's certainly no staff shortage in the Wallonia Public Service. Still in Flanders, we spent a night in Aals...