Belgium, we love you but why are you here?

We have spent the last 2 weeks in mainly rural Belgium, climbing the River Dender/Dendre and then the Blaton-Ath canal.  This brings us from the heart of Flanders to just short of the French border.  Tomorrow, we will cross the unmarked border into France and journey through Picardy.

But, in a week when Belgium celebrated its national day, we've been thinking about Belgium as a country.  This is our 3rd summer cruising in this surprisingly interesting country and we've been struck by its differences.  Flanders feels like the assertive part of Belgium.  Its people speak Dutch and often prefer to speak English rather than French.  They are largest part of Belgium.  With a per capita GDP of €35,300, they are (on average) 42% richer than their compatriots in Wallonia who have only €24,800.  And they seem to have a strong sense that the Flemish fund the Walloons.  The Walloons are a bit less than a third of the population and they feel comfortably French, generally not wanting to use any other language.

On Tuesday, we cruised south from Geraardsbergen with its second Mannekin Pis (why would you want two?).  We'd left the Flemish waterways people behind and were cruising the linguistic border into Wallonia.  Much changes.  For a start, getting through to the right lock keepers was a trial of my French and took 3 calls before I was told they were too busy to admit us the next day.  And, where Flemish locks have one keeper, the Walloons only work in pairs.  They are very friendly and amusingly relaxed about times.  It's very nice but very different.  So, was I right to think Belgium isn't really a country?  I decided to find out.

If, like me, your European history lets you down, this handy animation explains how Belgium got to be here.

I was interested to learn the role that Britain played in this.  And, of course, the guarantee that Britain gave to defend Belgium was the trigger that brought us into the First World War (so, it really matters).

On Thursday, we found ourselves in the town of Ladeuze and in a wonderful bar called Chez Gina.  Gina is 85 and been running her bar for 64 years.  The bar itself is a museum of artifacts and recent TV coverage brings visitors as well as the steady trade from locals after work each evening.  Gina herself is a remarkable old lady and was keen to meet Cora (that's remarkable).  On Thursday, we found ourselves with 3 Flemish fellow boaters who we'd cruised with, the local Mayor in for his evening glass and a Wallonian lady who had seen the bar on TV and come to admire it.  An amusing Dutch/French/English conversation started and became more lively as the selection of beers were sampled.  I struck with, "what do you have in common as Belgians".  The inevitable first answer was soccer (they're quite good at it!).  Then beer (they're really good at that and it seems to know no border).  Then they weren't so sure.  Perhaps royalty but none of them were very excited about that.  The Flemish were clear that they aren't Dutch and the Walloons certainly don't want to be French.  They felt they were both misfits together and that was a binding.  Something they all wanted to say (and I don't think it was just the beer) was that they were open minded about people ("peoples is peoples" to steal a muppets gag).  I think this is true because nobody commented on immigration - in a country where 25% have roots somewhere else.

Throughout all this Gina sat companionably holding Cora's lead and nodding occasionally.  Eventually, we all agreed that Belgium is a nice place to be, especially if you can travel round it very slowly in a boat and drink lots of beer.  We managed both.

It's a lovely country and I'm glad Britain guaranteed its existence way back in 1839.  We leave tomorrow but we'll be glad when we cross the border again in October to return to a town that's really called Brugge but even the Flemish seem to call Bruges!

We're back on big waterways with big boats and even bigger locks.  This one dropped us 12.5m which is a lot of water.

Tomorrow, we drop down onto the Escaut (OK Scheldt in Dutch).  After stopping to fill our fuel tank - which is a BIG one, we'll be heading upstream into France and the town of Vallenciennes.  See you there.