The river Linge and Leerdam
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We left Den Bosche and headed off in convoy with another five barges along the Meuse Maas toward Heusden but due to some misunderstanding we were talking to the wrong marina to arrange our overnight stop. We hovered for ages waiting for the harbour master to guide us in whilst he searched for us at the other marina. It all got sorted in the end and we secured a place next to the HM office in Heusden. It was a pretty little town and we had a first class meal in the Lost Cannonball restaurant. The next day Mimosa and Proper Job arrived so we had a few drinks in the evening onboard Shensi.
The following day we set off for Leerdam. We crossed the river Maas – quite choppy with lots of commercials. Fortunately we turned off quite quickly at Gorichem. At the first bridge we waited for quite a long time before they said we would need to take an alternative ‘sport route’. This we did, only to find we could not get anyone to raise that bridge. With no signage or warnings we again waited for action, and eventually after repeated calls they came back and said that actually that particular was not working that day and that if we wanted to get through we would need to drop the bimin.
Eventually we arrived at Leerdam and found a nice mooring on the public quay outside a restaurant where we settled in for a couple of days, and then went out for food. We found a good Greek restaurant, Alexy’s, run by Fortinos – great food, lots of ouzo and probably far too much to drink. But thoroughly enjoyable.
We spent the next day wandering around Leerdam, taking in the Glass Museum, and accidentally calling into a glass blowing demonstration near to the mooring which proved to be really interesting. For our second evening meal we called into The Bear overlooking the harbour, once again having a lovely meal.
In the morning we look off and headed up the Linge as far as we could. Quite busy with lots of small craft because it was a holiday weekend, but the scenery was fabulous and it was quite a relaxed journey. We stopped at a riverside restaurant for a rest and a drink before continuing on to our next night’s stop.
Although we had anticipated continuing a little further, we made it back to Leerdam and decided to stop there again for another night and were lucky enough to pick up almost the same spot as the previous two evenings.
The following day we set off back down the Linge until we joined the river Lek; after several lifting bridges later and some quite busy boat traffic (which we think was to do with a local Tug Boat Festival) we came to the small village of Meerkerke and decided to stop off there for the night. The mooring was a nice grassy stretch, but the river was quite choppy due to the number of vessels passing by – it was reasonably peaceful and we were hopeful that it would settle down later in the evening.
