2020 starts here, just not yet!
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Like everyone else, we could never have guessed what was in store for us this year!
As we sat in our flat in the Alps relaxing and planning this year’s cruising, it seemed that almost overnight everything started shutting down because of the new big in turn, covid19 – the ski resort closed and then next day we heard that the whole of France w as going into lockdown and we were given until midday to get home. We considered staying put as it was ‘just’ a two week lockdown, and La Foux is a great place to stay if you have to be isolated. However, in the circumstances I decided that it would be better to quickly return to the boat so that we would be able to start our cruising on 1st April yet still be isolated if necessary.
With that in mind, I phoned the hotel we were to use en-route to see if we could switch our booking to an earlier date, only to be told that all hotels in France were closing with immediate effect! That left us with no option but to make the 700 mile trip back to Bruges in one day, something that we could do although I would have preferred not to.
On what turned out to be the final day before lockdown in France, Nicki had been out walking with Casper and as she walked through the abnormally quiet village she noticed that the local supermarket was putting outside all their perishable goods for anyone to take, free of charge – they were closing down that day since the village was effectively empty. The police were also there so Nicki asked them about travel restrictions, only to be told that we needed to ‘go now’ and that in order to do so we would need a ‘permit to travel’, which they kindly supplied for us stating our chosen destination as Belgium (so that we could at least return to Shensi and prepare for our cruising). Fortunately they didn’t date the permit so I decided we would leave the next day instead, thus giving us time to tidy up the apartment and prepare for the journey.
Up early and ready for the off, it was a very quiet trip down the valley onto the major roads, and I have to say that generally it was a very good trip back – a lovely sunny day with little or no traffic other than the big trucks and lorries. We did get stopped a couple of times en route by police but when we showed them the permit they were quite happy for us to be travelling.
Finally, after thirteen hours of driving, we arrived back in Flandria only to discover that Belgium had also gone into lockdown at midday that very day! Sadly, one of the lockdown restrictions was that there was to be no movement on the waterways, which meant that we could not leave the area by boat any time soon – but on the plus side the marina in Bruges is beautifully situated to give access to everything we need and unlike in the UK, all the supermarkets seemed to be fully stocked and accessible! Despite everything going on, Bruges still seemed to be maintaining its day to day living, if on a much quieter and less populated scale, although tourism has come to a virtual stop.
Despite all the difficulties everywhere, a few days after our return Nicki fell and badly cut her face, such that she required a trip to A&E for stitching and, later still, to the dentist to check there was no long term damage to her teeth. Not ideal places to end up in, but needs must. And for me, a trip to the doctor to get an injection for my knee to give me a little more mobility, which happily worked well.
Early on after our return, the Maritime Police came round to check and record the status of all the marina’s boaters, and to find out why we needed to stay in Bruges; they informed us that they could provide an escort if we needed to move but I didn’t think there was anywhere we could move to at that point so we declined their kind offer.
Even though the pandemic and lockdown forced us to remain in the jachthaven since movement was out of the question, we still had to pay mooring fees here for the duration (although that was not a major issue as we would have been largely doing that elsewhere anyway). The annoying thing was that we had to pay the Belgian Waterways license despite the fact that we can’t move within or leave the country, and this season a new system had been implemented such that the rate has gone up 300% (our original plan had been to go straight into the Netherlands on 1st April, to avoid having to pay this) – talk about adding insult to injury!!
Bruges now devoid of tourists
However, we now had plenty of time to sort out all the pre-season jobs that I had identified over the past year, for which I had luckily already sourced all the bits.
Aside from waterways issues, our main niggle was that the generator would only run for a couple of minutes before shutting down and we really needed it in order to run the oven since the shore supply was not up to the task. It may just have been fuel starvation though, as I finally realised there is an inline filter that had never been changed …. one of these was quickly put on order, with the idea that if it did not fix the problem then we would need to engage someone to help out, but that we would have one ready in the future
Jobs completed to that point included an engine service, hydraulics service, smell filter replacement, generator service and sink tap replacement, and next to be done were motorisation of the Blue Board and cleaning the boat.
