Cruising the Meuse – Waulsort to Liege
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During the early part of July we had returned to the UK for a bit (primarily for Alec’s graduation) and Amy and Sam came back with us to spend a few days cruising from Waulsort down to near the French border (arriving on Bastille Day, so we just had to pop into Givet to see any celebrations – and after a 45 min. walk there we were lucky enough to catch a fabulous fireworks display along the riverside and join in with all the locals enjoying themselves. Unfortunately that also meant that at 11.30pm we then had a 45 min. walk back to the boat, but it was worth it).
Next day we turned back, stopping again in Dinant, where we came across a small local procession, possibly to mark Bastille Day (but that’s a french celebration, so not too sure if that’s what it was about), and later in the evening we took a walk along the river and ended up at a local bar with a band giving 60’s renditions.
The following day 
(Nicki’s birthday) we turned back and headed up towards Namur, making a stop at Profondville on the way. As ever, we managed to encounter a small panic in one lock, and this resulted in a broken rope and Nicki dropping her phone overboard (happy birthday Nicki). We should probably have realised by now just how quickly things can go wrong, especially in locks where you cannot afford to get distracted!
But we made it to Profondville, and stopped so that Nicki, Sam and Amy could go on an inflatable ‘boat’ ride along that stretch of the river – I was happy to sit that one out but it did look like they had great fun. After their ride we enticed the dogs into the water with them, but they weren’t as keen as we all thought they’d be! It being such a nice day, we decided to moor up at Profondville for the night, and popped out for dinner at a little bistro before settling down for the evening, ready for an early departure in the morning.
A further day’s travelling and we made it to Namur with no further catastrophies, and Amy and Sam were able to catch a train back from Namur to Brussels for a spot of sightseeing before catching the Eurostar back to the UK; next day I went off to collect our car from its last parking spot in Waulsort (as I also needed to go back to the UK for a couple of days on the following Monday). Because of this, we decided to extend our stay in Namur for a week, which would mean that I could then drive back to the UK from there as having the car gave me more flexibility once back home, plus having the car available to us for those few days meant that we could make a few tours further afield. We had cruised past a chateau near Waulsort, and that was our first visit, which also took in the gardens of Freyr in Waulsort. The house and grounds were lovely but as elsewhere, the plantlife was suffering from the extended heat wave. Our second outing was to Liege to scope out potential moorings for our visit there, which proved very useful.
(In the UK, my first day back was fairly busy; one of my chores was to clear out a lock up that we no longer needed, so the car was a must for that. It was also convenient to pick up a replacement SIM and phone at the same time. Tuesday I had a hospital appointment to keep, and after that I made the return to Namur, arriving sometime after mid-night on Tuesday/Wednesday.)
Early-ish Wednesday morning we headed off to Huy. (We had previously passed through Huy on our way to Liege in the car, so knew it would be worth stopping here, especially as we had found what looked to be a pretty good mooring spot in the town). The mooring we tied up at was pretty good, just by the bridge but the commercials seemed to go past at full speed and their wash was intense. We stayed for two days and the boat pretty much rolled around all the time. Still, we made time to visit the Fort in Huy, very interesting and quite saddening – it used to hold over 8,000 prisoners during the second world war (including PD Woodhouse, but only for a week in 1944). 
The River Meuse is massive and a lot of the time the surface is so choppy you feel like you are at sea – at times we were rolling about especially with the wash from the other boats. On the second evening, it was interesting to see a massive barge travelling upstream encounter a smaller commercial travelling downstream at the bridge where we were moored. Downstream has priority but neither seemed to be slowing until about 100 yards short of the bridge, the upstream barge slowed and stopped in what appeared an impossible amount of space. It then moved off to the side, towards us! A 100 meter barge closing quickly towards us made me a bit nervous but he controlled it with ease.
Having survived that experience, we journeyed on to Liege the next day. On our way here we travelled with all windows and doors open, fans on, roof raised. It’s just so, so hot – the poor dogs probably don’t understand what’s happened to them.
It is difficult to appreciate the size of this lock. About 50M wide and there are three barges in there, all over 100M long with us in the middle plus a couple of other cruisers.
On our way round the north of Belgium, today we set off from Huy heading into Liege. Our mooring is slightly separated from the main stream and hopefully will not be subject to the same wash as on the main drag; sadly we are sitting inside with the A/C on full blast on what is so far/hopefully the hottest day of the year with temperatures topping 38c, intending only to venture out in the mornings and evenings, but we’ll see how it goes.
