Deinze to Bruges

We started the day with a quick look inside the church next to the boat, it is a gothic 3 nave church, first built in 900 and something but the current building dates from the 14th century.  Then I went to the supermarket opposite the church - got to make sure we have enough food on board for our guests!  And then I had to wait for the Mobistar store across the bridge from the supermarket to open at 9.30.  The credit has run out on our phone and we needed to top it up.

Finally at 10.00 we set off from Deinze into the Ringvaart around Ghent, not a very inspiring canal and with a lot of commercial traffic.

Then we turned onto the Ghent - Bruges canal.  That was much better, not nearly as many big barges, lots of trees and bucolic pastoral scenes.

We have often seen huge groups of children on bicycles with a few adults in charge, obviously learning the rules of the road and bicycle etiquette.  We wonder if this is part of the school carriculum seeing we always see them during school hours.

What are these things?  Could they be casemates from the First World War?  They look like bunkers and we have seen along the Kempen canals in the North East of Flanders too.

There were two lift bridges close to Bruges.  A big barge had overtaken us not long before we arrived at the first one so he went through quite a way ahead of us.  I had called the bridge keeper, as you are required to do, and instead of closing the bridge after the barge and reopening when we arrived, which would have meant we would have to wait a little, he left the bridge open all the time until we got there.  Probably a good 5 minutes - there was a very long queue of cars waiting each side of the booms before the bridge went back down.  I am sure were not very popular!

On the outskirts of Bruges we passed a huge number of caravans parked up next to the canal with families living on board.  

I counted 84, and I didn't start counting till we passed a whole lot.  Services are provided, they are all hooked up to electricty.  All have satellite TV, many have Harley Davidsons, some are glorious double storey motorhomes with additional wings.  Not gypsies, the site was clean and tidy.  Not holiday makers, they were packed in cheek by jowl and obviously had not moved for some time.  Could they be immigrants from Eastern Europe?

Finally, at 3.15, we arrived at Flandria Yacht Club.  Rather up-market.  Very nice.  Not cheap at €15 per day, but that includes not only water and electricity but also wi-fi!

Not 10 minutes after we arrived, Oliver and Penny pulled up in the car park.  Fantastic to see them again after so many years.

They now live in the UK where they have a cider farm, Dorset Nectar, which they run with their 5 children.  They brought some of their produce with them so we could sample it - 9 cases!  They produce 5 different flavours of cider, apple juice and cider vinegar (there were a few bottles of those too).  The problem is where to put 9 cases of booze on a 9m boat - we might just have to drink it!

Their website www.dorsetnectar.co.uk