We are now in Reims, having traveled from the Flemish region of Belgium through Wallonia, the French speaking region and into France on the river Meuse.  It has been an interesting trip and we have learned much about the history and culture of the areas.  We found that Wallonia might as well be a different country. The Flemish are quite like the Dutch, with a common language spoken a little more softly without the guttural “g”, pronounced as if they are going to produce a large quantity of phlegm.  They are also a little more reserved, but just as friendly and helpful as the Dutch when approached. Most people speak English, which makes it easy for us.  The Flemish are critical of the Wallonie; the laws dictate that the same amount of government money be allocated to each region and the Flemish say that the Wallonie waste it while the Flemish spend it wisely. Historically, of course they were different countries belonging to Holland and France until Belgium was created in the mid 19^th century.  Further discord was created in 1914 when the Germans invaded.  The battle fronts were in Flanders and most of the fighting troops were Flemish defending their soil, but the officers were French and could not understand Flemish. There was much discrimination against the Flemish.  People in Europe don’t easily forgive and forget the past.  In Wallonia French is the language and few people speak English.  I took two years on French in school exactly 50 years ago and then some evening classes at the UW.  Thanks to my teacher there, Renee Michard, I have been able to get along fairly well with the day to day necessities and everyone is very patient, understanding and helpful. Thanks Renee, I will see you again in you winter classes.

Belgium is not as easy for traveling by boat as Holland.  The places where you can stop are few and you cannot tie up anywhere along the canal as the banks have sloping concrete or stone walls.  There a quays for the commercial barges but they are not suitable or available for small boats.  With planning we were able to see most of the interesting places.  There is quite a bit of commercial traffic in and through Belguim and the locks are large and not easy for small vessels.  Sometimes we had to tie to a ladder and work our way up or down the rungs as the lock filled or emptied. As we traveled south the terrain changed from flat to hilly as we entered the Ardennes region.  Here, between Mons and Charleroi, is the Ascenseur Strepy-Thieu.  Here there are twin elevators that lift you 73 meters (240 feet) vertically. The photo on the left shows us waiting at the bottom for the boats that have descended to exit.  Then we drove into what looked like a very large lock.  We were all by ourselves in this huge bathtub of water, the gates closed behind us and the whole thing went up slowly and smoothly, just like an elevator, which indeed it was.  The two elevators work individually and do not counter-balance each other.  The photo below left shows the view where we entered from the top and the photo below shows the top behind us as we left.

 

After that experience we made a short detour north towards Brussels from our eastward journey across the bottom of Belgium to see the Inclined plane at Ronquierre.  This has a vertical lift and descent of 68 meters, almost the same as the elevators.  Here you drive into the “bathtub” which is on wheels and is winched up and down a track a mile long, yes, a mile.  There is a visitors’ center at the top with a tall tower. The photo to the left shows the view from the top of the tower.  The barge in the “tub” is about 115 feet long.  We did not go down the plane, but stayed overnight at the top and then continued west through Charleroi to Namur.

 From Mons to Charleroi is very industrial and for years the economy was based on coal mining.  Although we were entering the hilly country of the Ardennes, the hills around here were huge slag heaps.  Charleroi was the nastiest, dirtiest area we had seen and we were glad to pass through without stopping and on to Namur.  Namur is a small city at the junction of the Sambre and Meuse rivers in Belgium.  The Meuse flows from France north through Belgium, becomes the Mass in Holland, turns west, joins the Rhine in the Hollands Diepe in Zeeland and empties into the North Sea.

Namur is a beautiful small city with a huge citadel overlooking it from a high cliff.  We arrived there early on Monday morning, July5th and moored in a Marina on the other side of the river Meuse from the city. About 10:00 a.m. we noticed crowds of people assembling on the street across the river from us.  We found out that the Tour de France was coming through about 5:00 p.m., so at 3:00 p.m. we found a place on the route about 200 yards from the finish.  We were amazed at the continuous parade of “official” vehicles advertising stuff and throwing free samples into the crowd.  Interspersed with police vehicles and motorcycles, the whole Namur fire department and cars containing dignitaries this parade continued for more than two hours with not a bicycle in sight.  If this continued for the whole tour, as I am sure it did, the amount of gasoline consumed must have been stupendous and at about $6 per US gallon not inexpensive.  Well, finally, at 5:15 about 140 competitors, all tightly bunched together, went by in the blink of an eye at 40 miles per hour, followed by three stragglers, whom we cheered as they were the only ones we really saw.

From Namur we headed up river to Dinant, the last village in Belgium, and crossed the French border at Givet, where we bought our permit to travel in France.  We purchased thirty days of travel and we mark off a square with the date on each day we actually are moving on the water; days spent in harbor or on the river bank are not counted.  This part of the river is very beautiful and has high cliffs on both sides with the villages strung out along the banks.  There are many citadels perched on top of the cliffs, built and used though the centuries to guard the river.  The river climbs steadily as it meanders through the Ardennes and the surrounding country side so we got lots of practice going up many locks.  We stopped to visit castles and abbeys and at villages, one of which was having a medieval festival along the bank right beside where we were moored; a delightful experience.  We arrived at the twin towns of Charleville-Mezieres where we tried unsuccessfully to do e-mail, but did manage to get a card for our phone so that we now have a French phone number.  We arrived just at the start of a Marionette Festival, held here every three years.  We also met a Seattle couple traveling on their barge that they had purchased earlier this year in Holland.  They live on Bainbridge Island.

Just after Charleville-Mezierere we turned off the river to head west along the Canal des Ardennes, still climbing steadily through locks to the summit.  We then went down the other side, 27 locks in sequence over 9 km (5.6 miles) with no stops in between allowed.  Another two locks took us to our moorage; we had traveled only 17 km in six hours.  At our next stop at the village of Rethel we discovered that it was St Anne’s Festival with a big parade and a traveling amusement park of surprising size.  We had some great people watching and ate a lot of food that wasn’t exactly healthy.  We shortly turned from our westerly route to go south towards the river Marne, which will lead us to the Seine and into Paris, eventually.  Half way along this canal is the ancient city of Reims, where we are now.  We’ll tell you more about that in our next e-mail.

 I hope that this e-mail is not too large for those of you without a broadband internet connection.  I really wanted to show you the photos because I have never seen anything like these huge engineering structures before.  We have many more photos of course and I will try to get some of them onto our website when we return to Seattle in September.

It has been very difficult to find places to do e-mail in the small towns and villages so our next travelogue will probably be from Paris.  Until then, have a great summer, we love to hear what you are up to.

Patricia and Colin,

On “Fiesta”