Through Belgium

Since our arrival in Belgium the scenery, the welcoming village atmosphere in towns we visit, the food and even the commercial traffic on the canals has improved. The latter specifically from Namur, where the Meuse and the Sambre merge and some of the barges follow the Sambre from/towards the West and Brussels. We are cruising South towards the French border between Dinant and Givet.

Not all beautiful, but still interesting

Namur Citadelle

Our next port of call was Namur, where we had a perfectly easy and convenient mooring on the town quay, but without any facilities such as electricity and water. We had intended installing six 110Ah batteries for our household use, but as they were not in stock we had to make do with the original four, giving us a reserve of 440 Ah. By the time we had reached Namur, having followed the status of our solar and engine driven charging as well as our consumption of electricity, it was clear to me that for independence for a few days we would need considerably more sunlight than we were getting, more hours of travelling to charge the fully batteries by way of the alternator and a bigger reserve capacity, so I ordered four more batteries of the same brand and model that we already had on the Internet from a company in the UK. These were couriered to us and delivered at the very pleasant marina we ended up staying in in Namur within two days of ordering. I was well impressed. I needed to have additional battery cables made up to fit these batteries and this exercise took most of my day. It was quite sunny when I started off on my bike but I ended up riding in vain up a 4 km hill and doing two extremely tedious other detours after losing my way following directions in French by various people along the way, and getting rain-soaked on three occasions! Eventualy I found the auto electrician shop I had been directed to at 12:05 only to find they were closed between 12:00 and 13:00 for lunch. Ah well, c'est la vie, and I dried out at the nearest bar with a hot coffee watching the local version of Money or the Box or some other game show that was rambling on on local TV in the bar. At least I was out of the rain for a while. Eventually I installed the additional batteries and we now seem to have a capacity that will last us through a few days without travelling, particularly if the sun decides to show itself.

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Water taxi

Namur Station

Jambes Marina

Human settlement has been traced in Namur/Namen since 6000 BC

We had invited our Dutch friends Bert and Aukje, who live on board a boat in Amsterdam, to visit us anytime they wished and they decided to drive down to Namur and spend a week with us exploring the town and relaxing. They brought their newly acquired puppy along and he continued his training while on board with us. It was lovely having their company and their advice as they also owned a tjalk like ours in the past. We had to move the boat from one marina in Namur to another that could accomodate our length and it was quite interesting to see how the dynamics of managing the ship changed with two very experienced crew on board. This experience in a way cemented the home-grown style and teamwork approach Rudi and I had developed during the period of the cruise so far. We suddenly realsied that we did actually understand the boat quite well and also that the teamwork and trust we had developed in each others abilities was quite adequate to the task. Bert and Aukje's presence assisted greatly in boosting our confidence as a team. Their presence and experience on the short cruise through the lock to fill up with diesel and to relocate to the new marina showed us that what we were doing was correct.

Visiting the Citadel

The Citadelle strategically guards over the Meuse and the Sambre. Strangely apparently each force that tried to take the Citadelle was sucessful in breaching the ramparts 

Blue-eyed "Pol" when good, "Politie" when bad

Aukje

 

Reflective Bert

We had had a new larger diesel tank installed in tandem with the existing diesel tank to extend our range. This had proved quite a difficulty when we tried to fill her up in Zaandam (at 1.13 Euros per litre, mind you). The aeration or breather system that we had installed simply did not function effectively and the filling took nearly an hour with frequent spillage on deck. I had been thinking of how to fix this along the way and gave our friend Willem a call to convey the problem. I suggested that I split the two tanks and operate them independently, which he agreed upon. That evening Willem phoned me back and suggested a simpler solution of drilling an additional 12mm aperture in the top of the new tank with a threaded bolt to be removed while filling. This easy solution was applied in Namur and proved sucessful as I was able to fill the new tank at a regular rate without spillage. However, I stopped short of refilling the existing tank via this system as the diesel in Namur cost Euro 1,46 per litre, our consumption seemed quite economical and I was unsure of how well the bolt would seal off the diesel in the tank. I will try to refill the old tank as well at the next diesel stop.

The marina we stayed at for the week in Namur was on a peaceful park where boules, tennis and frisby golf was played. The latter having a course of strange steel structures, much like those erected to keep refuse bags away from dogs, laid our wherein one would have to try to throw the frisbee in the least number of attempts. We deposited the two, now supurfluous, hand-me-down bentwood chairs we had inherited from Lisa and Paul at the beginning in Zaandam next to one of the boule courses where the elderly gentlemen could reflect on the progress of the game.

Boule in the park

He brought his dog down to play like this three times a day!

We decided to stay an extra day on Sunday 14th as there was a big fete on that reflected centuries of rivalry between the two towns on the opposite sides of the Meuse, La Jambes and La Plante. Apart from the regular brocante where all and sundry present essentially a big garage sale along the road, the two sides have a marine joust, with two teams of oarsmen propelling their strange barques with platforms for the jousters to be rammed off much to the delight of the gathered crowds. Of course just as the games began our camera decided to quit and thus we do not have pictures of the actual joust, but only the preparations. In the first joust the blue team dislodged the red jouster and he had to climb back onto his craft to face a similar fate on the return match. Thus the festivities proceeded through the afternoon.

Jousters ready on back platform

Entertainment II

Entertainment I

We left Namur on Monday morning for a very pleasant and picturesque trip to Dinant where another competition and festivities, 15th Aug being a public holiday, were being held. It was interesting on the way that we left Namur marina with another, faster boat, but he was compelled by the lock-keeper to wait for us at each of the five locks we had to pass through and eventualy arrived at Dinant at the same time. In one of the locks I was releived to see Rudi cracking herself up laughing at my unhandy attempts at attaching a rope in the first lock and nearly falling overboard. She has had a torrid time of the locks and this was a sign to me that she was now starting to realise she is competent with the ropes and does no longer need to stress about it.

An interesting boat pool

Ok! Another lock looming!

Dinant

Home build weird floats with Green Peace theme

Unfortunately the town quay was closed for "plaisanciers" like us and was being used in the festivities so after doing a very elegant and gentle mooring in front of all the crowds we saw the notice that the quay was closed on the 15th and had to untie and find a mooring elsewhere. We eventually tied up against the quay away from town, but unfortunately with a very shallow and potentially damaging rocky slope beneath us. I only realised this after we had actually tied up temporarily but was not keen to make another attempt at finding another mooring upstream. We made a plan by fixing two long wooden stays to the boat and against the canal side to keep us away from the rocky slope. Fortunately there was little stream and hardly any wind so the plan worked well overnight and we were able to move back to the very convenient mooring in town, below the Church and imposing Citadelle and next to the row of restaurants and the ambiance of the town. Water and electricity was included in the nightly Euro 20 fee and we enjoyed the buzz of staying in the heart of the waterside night life of Dinant for a few days.

We met a really friendly and happy Dutch couple, Joep and Thea Bejaars whom we feel sure we will meet up with again. He is the senior NCO in the Dutch Army Corps of Engineers and she has her own business acting as secretariat to a number of associations/companies in s'Hertogenbosch. When we met them on the pierside at their boat both Rudi and I immediately took a liking to them and unfortunately did not follow our instincts in inviting them to join us for a meal of moules which I had promised Rudi I was going to prepare, right in front of the clientele of the Chez Bouboule, the "Le Roi Des Moules" or the king of mussels. I had a fun time preparing the mussels out in the open, but was rather sorry about not having invited Joep and Thea as we saw them go across to have a mussel meal at the restaurant. We invited them over for liquors and coffee afterwards and talked for hours, well after the restaurants had closed for the night. They left the following morning going South but we look forward to meeting them on their way back home after their holiday.They actually passed us this morning on their way back, laughing and waving!

33 ways to prepare mussels from Le Roi!

I realise that this is more and more the way to eat out, no conversation only sms-ing!

Joep and Thea on their way South

Dinant is also known as the birthpace of Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the saxophone in the 1840s, while he was not feted in Belgium at the time he became the sole supplier of saxophones to the french military. However, a small museum in Dinant and many visible references to the him and the saxophone exist in Dinant today. In 2006 1400 top saxophonists from all over the world gathered in Dinant to honour him and the instrument he invented.

We visited the Citadelle and the church and while not avid followers of European history were again impressed by the what drives mankind to change history. Much seems to be sourced simply in human greed and the desire for power. Individuals, sometimes masquerading as royalty, but often in history merely the most powerful or wealthy locals, changed the course of history by their acts. Dinant has over centuries played an important strategic role, guarding over the Meuse as a route North and the Citadelle able to rain down ancient projectiles on the bridges and access roads to town up to two kilometers away. Citadelle has been a museum since 1906, but even during the two world wars was host to opposing forces. Dinant was since the middle ages very wealthy and independent due to copper. It was well known for its high quality copper manufactures and was the centre of the guild of skilled copper artisans. Karel de Stoute of Holland wanted to subjugate the town by eliminating the guild and tied 800 of the "koperslaners" two-by two together and had them thrown into the river Meuse to drown. Rudi: A well-known fact is that I am terrified of heights, but there were 400 steps to ascend the mountain to be able to make this visit, so I was very brave and went up and down(!) in the cable car, eyes shut tightly!

Funny short fat canons

The gap in the thicks walls from where they kept an eye on the enemy way down below

The kitchen from where 100's of soldiers were being fed

The fort's assimilated trenches after it was hit by a bomb, all askew and a funny feeling walking there

Linqui far below

See the flag way up behind his head? That's where we visited the war museum

Dinant is well known for it's hard thin cakes (cookies)

..and other jummy stuff

I should interject and relate a little personal lesson at the Citadelle. Rudi and I decided to take the cable car up to the Citadelle, having done the tiring walking thing to the Citadelle in Namur. We paid the Euro 15 for the two of us and went up to the Citadelle where we were able to look out from a restaurant terrace, visit a one room museum of the military school that used to be based there and go into two little souvenir shops from the central square. All access to lookout points and any of the actual interesting bits of the Citadelle were closed to the general public and only accessible by guided tour, which I had somewhere deduced would cost another Euro 15 each. We were sorely fed up and remarked to each other that no one in his/her right mind would pay Rand 75 to visit any museum in South Africa and here we felt we were being ripped off. I was ready to write a very critical message in a guest book or complain to the management somehow. We had started to take the long walk back down and then found it a bit scary and returned to the square where I confronted one of the guides and told him I thought it was scandalous and would not be tolerated on South Africa. He calmly retorted that they had three competent and knowledgable guides that took groups around every hour. I insisted that it was really not fair to extort this amount and we the normal tourist public could not see any of the actual interesting bits of the Citadelle without paying a further amount. He replied incredulously but with composure "but the tour is free and included in your entrance fee". Well Rudi had a very good chuckle and I had a certain red face after that. The lesson being, make sure of your facts before showing your hand! This same guide took us around, was very competent, made the whole history come alive and we left with a felling of satisfaction. They really have done a good job at packaging the Citadelle and its history. Well done Dinant Syndicat d'Initiative, but please make it clear on the entrance ticket that the tour is included to save someone else the same embarrassment! Silly me!

We have been battling to maintain Internet access consistently and at a reasonable cost. It is fine when we are in a marina with WiFi, but they don't all have this. Our Dutch telephones are Prepaid and require the purchase of top-ups from a Dutch supermarket or outlet. As we are no longer in Holland it is now more compicated, having to ask someone to buy the top-up for us, finding a way of transferring the money to them and having them SMS the top-up code to us. I bought a special Belgian SIM card for internet only on my laptop for what Ithought was a reasonable Euro 10, but this only gave us 4 days of internet. I topped up with 20 Euros and this ran promptly ran out in little more than a week because we were in the marina and using WiFi. Therefore it is not only limited to a certain amount of data transmitted, but also a certain limited time frame, whether one uses the data or not.

I am flabbergasted at the disjuncture in services and mobile roaming costs within Europe. Instead of making mobile communication easy, cheap and integrated the Europeans seem to have sliced up the market by country and fiercely protect it with all kinds of restricted means. Technologically and as a business model I would say our mobile companies in South Africa are well ahead of the game and at least try to provide a user-friendly service that utilises the power of the medium.

Having said this I was on the internet the other day searching for a solution and found from someone's forum post that one could access one's email on the the Amazon Kindle. Even though the main use Amazon intends for the free connectivity via wifi or 3g it offers is for downloading books it also is available for web browsing and email.  After some further research this seemed the perfect solution to our problem of email communication and I have thus ordered a super duper wifi and free lifelong 3G Kindle shipped from the US of A for $189 which Amazon promises has no further contract or fee for global 3G use!!! barring certain document conversion services which we do not intend using. This version was $50 more than the WiFi only version and thus equal to what we have spent in the last month on communication, telephone and internet, so it really looks like a good deal if it lives up to its promise. What it does is to utilise WiFi where available, e.g. McDo's or other and where it is not it switches over to 3G, the cost of which is picked up by Amazon. It apparently works in all of Europe and in South Africa. We mainly want to be able to have a reliable email and not a service like what we have had that breaks up awaiting a costly recharge every now and then. It has already been delivered to the next marina we will stop at tomorrow and I am quite eager to see whether it lives up to the claims.

Talk to you next time from France!!!