Our travels around the world by bike, barge, boat, camel or horse

Day 21 From France to Belgium by Boat

9/29/2015

Well, life continues to throw curveballs our way. Our remaining few days travelling towards Belgium were rather speedy as we had to travel to the UK earlier than we had envisaged.

I hope you can enjoy the visual story. Now, I am in the UK and our ship's log book is in Belgium - so, details will be a little sparse. Please just enjoy the view and I'll update the blog with more details in a few weeks.

Narrower channels take more concentration, it can be shallower near the edges. The commercial drivers are very courteous and do what they can to move over and slow down.

The locks are beautifully adorned with flowers - and there's my little flower working the lines.

Need a spare anchor anyone?

Alongside the canal, these plump apples were just out of reach!

Renovators delight - anyone?

Weather watching - this only brought some rain, nothing too horrid.

House collecting again.

And here's the rain - we're in the lock with a commerical barge.

Leaving the lock behind the commercial barge - with two barges tied on starboard.

Another tunnel - name to be advised!

Still behind the commercial vessel today, view from our wheelhouse.

Our evening stop.

A bit more detail on our location tonight.

We are now north of Paris - the spaghetti of blue lines below the red circle is Paris.

We've done some miles!

7 Comments

Glen Barrera link

9/30/2015 08:23:45 am

Always fascinating. Seeing cities like Amiens on the map, it's like a journey through history.

Ian McCauley link

10/30/2015 11:36:31 pm

Sorry Jackie and Noel, I've only just discovered this barging part of your blogging. I'll have to trawl backwards. Looks like a epic journey. We've been on one fragment of it, from Chaumont to St Dizier, but want to (gradually) reverse your trip. Might be some very late comments to come! Hope you will enjoy Diksmuide this winter, and that we can catch up sometime next year in Belgium or N. France.

Jackie Parry link

10/31/2015 01:35:16 am

Hi Ian, so glad you found us. I hope you get the time to trawl back, we've taken some lovely photos. It was an epic journey and we loved every single minute. Do post comments, I'd love to know what you think.
We are enjoying Diksmuide very much, everything is located perfectly, all you could ever want, and all so quiet. Just perfect.
Hoping we can finally catch up face to face with you guys.... something to look forward to! :-)

Ian McCauley

11/7/2015 03:23:43 pm

Sunday morning and two cups of tea, and an enjoyable read and view of the journey. You sure move fast! Great effort to keep the blog up to date. We're hugely behind, but I guess a writer's discipline is something we lack, and I think we should use more photos and less text. In passing, if I haven't mentioned it, we had Marie-Suzanne on our list at the start, nice boat obviously - and well crewed. Catch you somewhere, sometime - soon hopefully.

11/8/2015 03:16:39 am

Ahhh, we've just had the most wonderful pancakes, I can tell Belgium is not going to be good for the belt! ;-)
I am so pleased you enjoyed our journey, it is funny a few people have said we move fast - to us to is very moderate. I guess after sailing 24 hours a day, week after week at sea, stopping each day seems a real luxury! As well that Noel and I love moving - thoughts enter your head and leave - the world just putters-by... it makes sense!
To make things more exciting we've just bought a motorbike - Our world has opened up a but more. It's funny, sailing all those miles we never felt 'contained' like we do (a bit) on a barge.... but that has been solved! What fun!
It's hard keeping up with all the events, but so important if you're memory is anything like mine (non-existent!) I am finding photos are more widely received too.. people just love sitting and dreaming - we are so lucky eh?
I am intrigued you had Marie-Suzanne on your list.... when was that? - when we were in negotiations another couple looked her at but didn't make any offers - so they accepted our 'competitive' offer much to our amazement - that said, we have had/are having to do a LOT of updating, safety wise and living wise. We are getting there - but we're getting tired of living in a half renovated boat >sigh<

11/8/2015 08:40:25 pm

My records show that I stored the file "Low cost 19m E80K.pdf" on the 21st Dec 2013, which was before you would have been putting in an offer for her. Amongst other things we were looking for spud poles and an aft deck with bimmini - absent from Marie-Suzanne at the time.

My records for that day also show that we also filed away details of an ad for "Red barge with spudpoles 19.75m.pdf" which eventually became our 'Catharina Elisabeth' - which you would have passed on your port side when travelling through Veurne the other day.

Small world.

Jackie link

11/9/2015 02:02:41 am

Interesting - it was closer to when we viewed her than I thought (by a few months) - we were looking at her for a while on the internet though. Yes, an aft deck would be nice - but we are quite 'over' the sun and the massive space at the front gives us a nice - outside area too if we want it. It'd be great for you guys to view the changes we've made internally when we catch up - We have a wonderful double island bed now - ensuite, wardrobes and we ripped out the lounge - we couldn't sit on it (although it made a great bed!) lots of changes but still on-going .... we did pass the fine Catharina Elisabeth - I have been meaning to say. She was sitting quite happily on her mooring awaiting your return.

Day 21 From France to Belgium by Boat

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