Ath to Ladeuze (return trip) 06-09 August
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6th August – Our first evening in Ath saw us wandering over to the Dream Bar to once again catch up with Phillipe, our friendly lock keeper – we maybe should have left earlier than we did, as a few drinks later and lots of entertaining company (socially distanced of course) meant we were very late getting back to the boat and completely wiped out by the time we hit the pillows. Philippe also asked us to stay on for his birthday celebrations at the bar with his family and friends on the Saturday evening, so we delayed our departure from Ath for a further day, intending to leave for Ladeuze on Sunday.
8th August – Another evening of socialising and a few more glasses of beer and celebratory birthday champagne was enjoyed, although this time we did manage an earlier night in readiness for an early-ish departure in the morning.
9th August – Unfortunately, it transpired that we would not be leaving early after all due to what we believe were issues with water levels, and we couldn’t really get away until early afternoon, by which time it was incredibly hot. When we did eventually leave, we then had to travel for four hours in the full heat of the afternoon, passing through seven locks and a lot of lifting bridges – all pretty exhausting, and to add insult to injury, whilst exiting one of the locks, I got stung on the leg by a wasp which did not help my concentration at that point. In addition, Nicki was absolutely roasting out on the decks whilst doing all the rope work, such that she ended up suffering from heatstroke and spent the next day in bed recovering. We are so not sun people!
With extremely hot weather forecast, our intention had been to get to Ladeuze so that we could chill for a week with the AC on full, thus staying nice and comfortable. Unfortunately we didn’t realise that the canal for various reasons had deteriorated quite a lot over the past few weeks so, apart from dealing with the heat, the canal was quite low on water and we struggled to get traction a few times, with the added ‘bonus’ by-product of the low levels being an increased density of weed which clogged up the thrusters and without my normal support gadgets things became a bit bumpy at times. At last though, we arrived at Ladeuze and spent some time organising ourselves before collapsing on the stern deck with a much-needed
beer, followed by dinner, TV and bed.
