Geraardsbergen to Aalst

Wednesday 14 October 2015

Having spent the previous day in relax mode doing not much else than the tourist ‘thing’ in Geraadsbergen it was now off down the gorgeous Dender to the city of Aalst passing through some pretty towns and pastoral landscape.

Pink bridge in Ninove

Neptune left his bike behind.

They held up +60 cars to let us through this one.

Aalst architecture.

Aalst Jachthaven ahead.

Six hours later we finally arrived spotting a gap amongst the boats at the pontoon; we had phoned ahead and the havenmeester had obviously juggled some boats around so that there would be a space for us. With the rain seemingly to have settled in, we decided to stay aboard, do an oil change, and explore the next day.

At about six ‘o clock I tried to get out of the marina to throw away the rubbish but found that we were securely locked in. Madame, who had left a message on the havenmeester’s phone to say that we had arrived, called him again to ask how we could get out. Moments later a slightly embarrassed Mario was at our window; he explained that he had received the message but thought it was from an English barge across the river so he called the lady there who said she had not phoned him. Assuming it was a mix-up, he retreated to his boat (a restored 1950’s American police patrol vessel!) and continued to await our arrival unaware that we had moored up earlier. Anyway, issued with an electromagnetic card for electricity, water and, very importantly, to the key-pad at the exit gate, he presented me with a club pennant as a birthday present (Lynn had mentioned that tomorrow is my birthday), apologised once again and toddled off. A very nice fella!