Traversing the Blaton-Ath Canal (25th June)
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After a good night’s sleep we were up in plenty of time to start our journey at Sluis 1 of this 21 lock canal, only to have the lock-keepers call at the boat just after 8am and tell us that we would need to wait a bit to leave as they and another team were co-ordinating our journey with a boat coming down the canal from Ath to Blaton. That was fine and at 9am they were back to give us the go-ahead to start our journey.
I had fixed up my camera onto the blueboard so that we could make a continuous film of the journey, so was hoping that I didn’t make any major faux-pas for everyone to see, and the whole trip went really smoothly. Everything seemed to be in our favour really, the sun was shining, timings were good and all-in-all it was a great day.
Somewhere around Sluis 8 we encountered the boat that was coming down from Ath and much to our surprise it was a large commercial, going in reverse! From here on in we were covered by another team and a few locks further on they sent us onward on our own whilst they went off for lunch. Their advice (in French) seemed to be to carry on to a bridge, stop and they’d meet up with us later. So, we carried on to a bridge and happily stopped under it to get some shade, with Nicki taking Casper off for a walk over to the next lock and/or bridge to see how much further it was. While she was gone I decided to check our maps and quickly realised that we had in fact stopped far too soon and that it was much, much further to the next lock/bridge than we’d anticipated. So I thought I’d better move on and try and pick up Nicki and Casper on the way – that proved a good move on my part, except there was no real boarding spot along the canal. I cruised alongside Nicki a little way hoping to find somewhere, but in the end it was a case of getting as close into the bank as possible, putting on the thruster, digging out a plank to lower precariously onto the bank, and then Casper and Nicki making a dash across. Luckily the board didn’t slip off and it was yet another success for the day.
The rest of the day went by with no other issues, and we eventually made it to our designated stopover at Ladeuze between sluis 14 and 15 where we had stopped a few years ago and which had been extremely pleasant, and where we knew we could get water and electricity as an added bonus. We were slightly disappointed to find four other boats there (for some reason we thought it was ‘our’ spot and ours alone) but we found a nice mooring at the end of the bank and although we managed to make a complete mess of being ‘professional moorers’ (our excuse – we were both tired and extremely hot, as a real heatwave had taken over that day) we got ourselves roped up for the night … aircon on and relax.
