Friday 10 April
What a stunning day! Cool and crisp in the morning,
warming up to shorts and t-shirts in the afternoon and nary a breath of wind - cruising
bliss.
We departed Maastricht at 08h40 and, after a short wait
at the Bosscheveld Sluis, stared our journey north along the Zuidwillemsvaart
canal, almost paralleling the Juliana canal along which we had traveled south
from Maasbracht to Maastricht.
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| Bosscheveld Sluis |
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| Change of courtesy flag required |
The canal is pretty with tree-lined banks and interspersed with rural villages and lots of graffitti covered bridges.
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| Spotted this old bunker alongside |
Just before midday we stopped at Eisden (not to
be confused with the Dutch Eijsden just south of Maastricht) to top up our
water supply and to look for Belgian sim cards for data and phone. With the
water connection nowhere to be found we decided to push on to Bocholt where Ian
had found an ICC instructor colleague of Geert-Jan Smolders (Aquaplanning) who
had agreed to do Ian’s practical test.
During the trip Lynn kept herself busy sanding and
varnishing the gangplank and sanding the handrail which will look lovely when finished.
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| This is how it should look (only four coats so far). |
At 14h45 we made fast at the smallish pontoons (maximum
allowable boat size of 15m) at Bocholt passantehaven, unloaded the E-bikes and
headed into town to look for sim cards and bicycle locks; found neither so will
‘cycle’ into the bigger town of Bree tomorrow.
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| Bocholt mooring |
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| Looking the other way |
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| The other side |
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| The cycle bridge to the other side. |
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| Down stream |
40.8kms
6 hours
1 lock
Bocholt N 051.17772 E 005.58475
Passantehaven: €7.50 p/n mooring including toilets and
electricity, €0.50 for a 3 minute shower and €0.50 for approximately 90l
drinking water.
The next day (Saturday 11 April, 2015) started with me
scraping and sanding the handrail and covered it with plastic just in time as
it started raining.
We rode into the next town Bree (home of Kim Clijsters)
to try and organise phone and data cards with Mobistar; somehow they agreed
that we could get a contract, cancellable at no notice, which will allow 2.5 hours
talktime in Belgium and 5GB data per month. But they needed a copy of my
passport, so back to Bochot it was…by which time Ian’s ICC examiner had arrived.
Lynn stayed with Ian and Sian on Elle (so that Ian’s licence would cover boats
longer than 10m as their boat Njord is only 9m long) while I took the bike back
to Bree in pouring rain to try and get the cards sorted out. Eventually this
was done and in great anticipation of being able to log onto the net and
retrieve email later that evening, I headed back to Bocholt only to see Elle
cruising past me on her way to Bree so it was about turn until Ian picked me up.
Thank goodness for electric bikes – 31kms on the clock on an ordinary bike
would have had me totally bushed!
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| Ian and ICC examiner Michael |
That evening we went for dinner at the highly
recommended, Michelin mentioned De Marmiet restaurant – unfortunately we did
not take a camera along.
Lynn started with a pretty mediocre seafood bisque and my
entrée of Cannelloni tuna and king crab, wakame, candied ginger, wasabi cream
and mirrin sounded delicious but when it arrived it consisted of a half dozen miniature coquilles
of tuna with dots of crab in the centre and teeny dollops of wasabi etc., sauces
surrounding them. But the ‘funny’ thing was that the arrangement hugged the
edge of the plate, leaving this blank platter centre stage – mentally, all I
saw was a big question mark staring at me as if waiting for the main event to
arrive. Comments from the other guests who ordered the same item seemed to
reflect our views completely.
Mains were an over seasoned saltimbocca of veal, Ganda
ham, foie gras and sage (a bit like a beef olive if you know what those are)
and a splendid fillet of Spanish Iberico pig, grain mustard and honey sauce but
also a bit salty.
The red wine which was recommended was excellent but the
whole package at €144 was not worth it.
