22 Aug Today we left the Netherlands and headed into Belgium with Moondance. This is the end of her touring in the Netherlands for this year, but we expect to return next year. We left our mooring at Het Bassin through the lock and headed south along the Meuse. The area of the lock is very industrial and run-down, but we were soon travelling past the lovely downtown and had a view of some of the walls, bridges and houses from the river which was nice. It wasn’t long before we were in Belgium, and we came to our first lock which was massive – a 13.9m rise. They had 4 lock chambers and the lock keeper directed us to lock 3 in French. I found it really difficult to work out what he was saying as it was in French and also through the VHF radio. Anyway, after much discussion and confusion we entered the lock behind a large tourist boat and moored up on the left. We made a mistake on the ropes – we didn’t put the front rope on a floating bollard, so we had to move it after the water rose about every 4 metres. We were moored towards the back of the lock, but it was still quite bumpy. I am sure that the lock keeper was trying to tell us what we should do by radio, but as we were on the deck we couldn’t hear him. Anyway we got through without major mishap. We then continued down the Albert Canal. We only had to go a short distance before we got to our turn off to Visé. Or so we thought. When we called the lock to enter the Meuse and reach Visé, we were told that it was closed for “pleusier jours” several days. So we quickly changed our plans to continue onto Liège, which was our planned destination for tomorrow. This meant staying on the Albert Canal for most of the way rather than travelling up the quieter Meuse. After the Meuse joined the Albert Canal again we were almost in Liège. It was lovely coming through the city, but there were giant barges roaring through. One even sneaked up behind us when we were not expecting it. But we did eventually get into our mooring at the Port de yachts de Liège, which is close to the centre of town. We had called to make a booking earlier in the day, but we still had to moor alongside another boat. It has been a lovely sunny day so we are expecting to enjoy a couple of days here.
2 Comments
Johanna Hersey
22/8/2017 10:05:06 pm
Et c'est maintenant que toutes ces heures de leçons de français deviennent utiles!
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Hilary
22/8/2017 10:18:46 pm
Wow - sounds like a bit of a challenging day! And you made it. Sorry not to have been there to act as the French go-between! Amusez-vous bien!
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