Cruising with the Carters: Moen Lock to Deinze on the Leie River

We are back in Dutch-speaking Flanders, much to Ian's delight because he can understand the language, not that you need to because all the lock-keepers speak excellent English, and French too apparently because we heard a French boat call in and the lock-keeper replied in French. I enjoyed trying out my rusty French in Wallonie but it is very frustrating if you don't speak the language!

It turned out to be a long day today. At 8.45 we noticed that the light at the lock had turned to green, so we took up the mooring lines and beetled into the lock as I called on the radio, just to find out that it had, in fact, been prepared for a commercial barge, so Ian started reversing out but nice Mr Lock-keeper asked how long we were and said we could stay in the lock but must move right to the front because the barge coming in was 80m long (the lock is 110m long, plenty of room for 9m Njord). This lock had a 4.5m rise., climbing out of the River Schelde valley.

Just 4km later we were into the 2nd lock, this one had a 12.5m drop; we were now dropping down into the Leie River valley. Again we entered the lock first, and waited and waited, and eventually after 15m the boat we shared the first lock with appeared - reversing in!

Well, that was a first for us. After leaving the lock he reversed something like 4km to the dock where he tied up to unload his cargo, which was too narrow for him to turn around, hence all the reversing.

The Bossuit-Kortrijk Canal is a bit of an enigma: in some places it was very industrial and not so charming in other places it is leafy, attractive and the water is crystal clear. At times we could see 2m down to the bottom. Lots of water plants, even in the centre of the canal, and some of them got wound up in the bow thruster and needed some rapid right-left thrusts to get free.

Soon we came to the 3 locks that take you from the outskirts of Kortrijk right to its heart and onto the Leie River. Three charming old locks, small and picturesque with a "mobiele ploeg" (mobile team, just one man in this case, who sees you through a series of locks and/or bridges).

The old fashioned way, one man closes one gate, walks all the way along the canal, crosses to the other side

then closes the other gate.

then he opens the "leaves" in the gates to let the water in or out, or sometimes if the river level is high it just pours over the top.

The last lock at Kortrijk, waiting for the maintenance skiff to be hauled out of the way.

Seeing we had already worked our way, yesterday, along one third of the distance we had intended to travel today, we arrived at our destination, Kortrijk, way earlier than expected so we decided to push on to Deinze, a place we have stayed at twice before and enjoyed. It is a longish slog down the Leie River, which is not particularly interesting. but it got warmer as the day wore on.

There are another 2 locks on the Leie, downstream of Kortrik, and at the first, Harelbeke, we had a long wait because a big commercial entered ahead of us, and another commercial was waiting to come up. Mrs Lock-keeper told us we would have to wait for this but once that barge had cleared the lock light stayed red....seemingly forever. So I called a second time, asking if we could enter the lock and without a reply the lights turned to green - we reckoned she had forgotten about us!

An hour later we were on our way again and the second lock went way smoother: still 1km away we could see 2 commercials leaving and others waiting to enter. I called to say we were just 9m long and 5 minutes away. OK, came the reply, there are 2 commercials entering but you will fit in too. This enormous lock, the Sint Baafsvijve, is 140m long and 16m wide!