We’re still here.  It is a week later, a week of hard work and frustration for Ian.  On Sunday evening he started on the valves in the toilet compartment – just to discover that there was a problem: when the boat was built the valves had been installed and then the heads compartment was built around them with just a couple of small holes to turn them on and off but absolutely no room to work on them.  

By Monday morning he had come to the conclusion there was no other answer but to demolish the whole heads compartment. 

We ordered a new toilet last week – if you are working on the heads you might as well do a good job and there was a small hairline crack in the base of the toilet.  We followed the  tracking with DHL and the delivery date was Tuesday.  We had specified that they must phone before delivery and we waited and waited.  By mid-afternoon, nothing.  So I checked the tracking again:  they had attempted delivery 20 minutes earlier unsuccessfully!  No phone call.  I sent emails to the supplier and to DHL but of course it would be ages before that bore any fruit.  Finally on Wednesday morning I found a number for DHL in Belgium and got a very helpful young man on the line.  He asked for an alternative delivery address so I gave Buitenbeentje.  That was in the nick of time because it was about to be despatched back to the supplier!  Finally on Thursday morning the toilet arrived and Ian was able to complete the mammoth task of rebuilding the heads compartment on Saturday.  

New valves installed

The rebuilding commences

The less said the better!

Working in cramped quarters

Done! Including new vinyl floor

Seeing we were without a toilet for so many days it was very convenient that our boat is only 50 paces away from the club’s ablution block!  But, gee, was I happy to get a functioning toilet on board again. 

With time to kill while waiting for the toilet arrive, Ian got bored (!) and redesigned the storage space on deck.  This came about because he has ordered 2 new solar panels which will be placed on the coach roof so he had to find somewhere else to store the bikes. He took apart the wooden benches on the aft deck that took up a lot of room and are never used, moved the wooden storage box from the fore deck to the aft deck and put the bbq on top of that and now the bicycles can be stored on the fore deck instead of on top of the coach roof, which gives us much better vision from inside the saloon.  Next year he will make a second storage box for the aft deck, strong enough to sit on and large enough to store the bbq in.

I'll be able to walk around behind the chair when Ian is driving

Lots of room for my chair plus a chair for visitors

The 2 new solar panels were delivered to Buitenbeentje, so no problems this time.  The guys at Buitenbeentje have been amazing, as they always are.  We already have 2 panels that are 18 months old and working very well, and a very old one that was already on the boat when we bought it, but they don’t quite keep up with our electricity needs; we have to run the engine from time to time to boost the batteries.  Hence the decision to get 2 new panels which he is installing today, and from now on we should not need to carry long electricity cables to plug in to shore power – in theory.  But we will anyway!

The new panels are bigger.  Note bike on the fore deck.

So now all the hard work is done and we have 3 full days before we fly home, we want to take a small trip up the Ijzer River tomorrow and stay overnight at either Knokkebrug or Fintele.

Diksmuide

What have we been doing for the last few days? Quite a bit really.  First of all, we bought a new fridge – a bit extravagant really.  We already have a magnificent National Luna which can get as cold as minus 30°C and we would like to use it as a freezer so when we see cheap specials we can stock up.  In the spring we bought a really cheap camping type fridge (for about €40 but you get what you pay for – so not much good).  The insulation was so thin that the motor was running more often than not. Waste of space and energy (and money!)  Last week we ordered a brand new proper boat fridge which runs on 12v and 220v.  It arrived at Buitenbeentje before we did so we picked it up on Thursday.  Again Ian was disappointed with the insulation and decided to work on it. 

Oh, and I did umpteen loads of laundry in the club machine. 

On Friday we moved to the visitors' mooring.

By Saturday Ian had worked out what he wanted to do and bought all the materials: a sheet of insulation foam 3cm thick and a roll of aluminium tape.

New fridge

First section of extra insulation

All done and wrapped in aluminium tape

When he got it installed we set it to run between 5 and 7 degrees and filled it with vegetables, wine, coke, cheese and pate.  I bought 4 packs or “boerenwurst” (our favourite Belgian sausage) which was on special: €2.95 for 2 x 400g packs.  Now that is cheap! And set the freezer to -7°C.

I went for a walk in-between the showers of rain.  Was I in for a treat.  In the St Nikolaas Church the choir was just rehearsing, perhaps a Christmas concert.

They were seriously good, especially one of the soloists who brought out goose pimples with her pure bell-like voice.  So my walk was delayed by an hour while I listened! 

Surely my favourite statue

St Nikolaas Church

The Belfry

Believe it or not - public toilets!

A street leading to the Groote Markt

A statue at the old fish market

The Beguinage

The Handzame Canal which runs through Diksmuide

Sunday:  a bright sunny day, but my goodness it started off cold.  It was warmer inside the fridge than inside the boat!  I got up early to watch, 6.30, to watch the MotoGP.  Ian thought about it but decided bed was the warmer option.  By late morning he thought it has warmed up enough for him to take on one of the jobs he has really been dreading – replacing the valves that go through the hull (kitchen sink, toilet and basin).  He started with the one he expected to be the most difficult – the kitchen sink.  He had to lie down on the pontoon, reach under the hull for the exit hole, place a wooden bung in the hole and then hammer it in so, hopefully, no water would come in when he took the valve off.  Surprisingly, it  was way easier than expected and we now have a brand new valve in the galley.

Old valve

New valve

Then we went for a bike ride across the countryside.  I bought a cycle route map of this area weeks ago when we first arrived and this is the first time we have used it – definitely not the last! Most of the fields have now been ploughed, except for those with parsnips, and we came across great mountains of beet.  

am not sure if this is sugar beet or fodder for the cows in winter.  We also passed a lot of “fat bottom” cows, otherwise known as Belgian Blues.  It’s the first time we have seen them up close, they really are very impressive, if somewhat grotesque. 

A Belgian Blue

Just another statue

Pretty countryside

Oudenburg to Diksmuide

36 km, 1 lock, 6 lift bridges

Yesterday was not a very nice day, not the kind of day to be out on the water at all.  It was windy, rainy, grey, cold and miserable.  We intended to go all the way to Diksmuide, 36 km, but by the time we got to Nieuwpoort, roughly half way, we had had enough and pulled into the VVW Westhoek where we have stayed quite a few times already.

But back to the beginning of the day.  We left the pontoon at Oudenaarde just after 10.00 having arranged with the lock keeper at Plassendale, who controls all the bridges to Nieuwpoort, to be at the first bridge at 10.15. In the wind it was difficult to hold station at the bridge while the booms went down to stop the traffic and the bridge slowly opened.

The pontoon at Oudenburg

The first of 6 lift bridges

There are some quaint cottages on this canal

And a new factory since last year

Squalls of rain accompanied us all the way to Nieuwpoort where we stopped at the Westhoek marina at lunchtime to chat to a friend from Diksmuide who runs the Le Boat charter fleet based there.  While there we decided we had had enough of the wind and the rain and instead of spending another 2 hours going to Diksmuide it would be much pleasanter to stop for the night.

I had a bit of difficulty raising the lock keeper at the Sint Joris lock. For some reason he could not hear my radio calls and eventually I phoned and the lock opened promptly.  The VVW Westhoek marina is just a few hundred metres from the lock and once tied up Ian set off by bike to a marine store to buy some fittings, hardy soul!

He was soon back to say the marine store was closed till the weekend and the harbour master’s hours are 10.00 to 12.00, so no showers and no internet!  Back to Plan A. Leaving Westhoek at 15.00, Ian steered from inside to avoid the worst of the wind and rain but in fact the weather improved a little and we were really pleased to be back “home”again.  

We weren't the only idiots! This is a trip boat full of punters - inside.

Our "home" river - the Ijzer

Tervaetebrug, last lift bridge of the day

However, we have lost our mooring in the shadow of the Ijzertoren.  Our permanent berth is now much further from the club, which is no problem when we are not on board but not really convenient for the next 2 weeks before go back to Faial.  Pol, the harbour master, suggested we make use of one of the free visitors’ moorings close to the club until 1 November when winter visitors arrive.

Moerbrugge to Oudenburg

27 kms, 2 locks, 10 lift bridges

There is a series of 5 lift bridges and 1 lock in the canal as it passes through Bruges, and they don’t just open willy-nilly whenever a boat wants to pass through.  And there is 1 lift bridge, Steenbruggebrug, we had to go through before entering Bruges which does not open at peak traffic times, 7.30 to 8.30 in the morning.  It is all carefully controlled and has to be planned in advance.  Our plan was: leave the mooring at 8.10, get to Steenbruggebrug for the 8.30 opening and arrive at the first bridge in Bruges in time to join the 9.00 convoy of pleasure craft.

But at 7.45 a huge barge arrived from Bruges which had to wait 45 minutes for the Moerbruggebrug to open at 8.30.  We were already hemmed in fore and aft by Cherdy and Rubis, our 2 barge companions of the last 2 nights, and the new barge settled down to wait right alongside Rubis, drifting backwards and forwards across our exit.   We decided to get out while we could so set off at 7.50, meaning a long wait at Steenbruggebrug unitl the 8.30 opening time.  That accomplished, we set off for the first bridge in Bruges, Katelijnpoort.  When I called for service we were told we would have to wait 20 minutes for a commercial barge which would join us in our trip through Bruges.  So we waited again.  

Watching the traffic while waiting

And who should show up behind us but Cherdy.  

Cherdy following behind us

From then on it all went swimmingly.

Gentpoortbrug

There is a lovely park alongside the canal

A missing bridge

Looks like it was cut off in a slightly raised position.  I wonder if it got stuck!

We joined by another pleasure craft, tied up against the wall before the Dammepoort lock, probably also told to wait and fall in with our convoy.

Big barge exits lock, small red boat waits with us to go in.

In the Dammepoort lock you loop your line around the blue ropes fixed to the side of the lock

Cherdy went out ahead of the 2 pleasure craft

In not much more than an hour and a half we cleared the last lift bridge – the quickestwe have managed the trip through Bruges.  We stopped for half an hour at the Scheepsdale bridge to buy some milk, bread and meat having run low with the unexpected extra night at Moerbrugge.  Then off we went to Plassendale Lock.  This is the entrance to the Plassendale-Nieuwpoort Canal with its series of low lift bridges and the bridge service is also set at specific times.  We had to wait just over half an hour, tied up inside the lock.  

This is quite an interesting lock, sometimes there is no difference in the water level between the two canals, sometimes the Plassendale-Nieuwpoort level is higher than the Gent-Oostende Canal, and at other times it is the other way round.  So it has two sets of gates at each end.

We stopped before the first lift bridge at the Genevepiete Ponton at Oudenburg.  We have stopped here many times before but never gone into the town, today I needed to find a pharmacy to get some medication and discovered it is a lot bigger and more interesting than I expected.  It also has a really nice big supermarket.  But what struck me most of all is how clean it is.  There is a little river running into the town with immaculate banks, lots of benches, lots of people walking dogs, and not a piece of paper or pile of do poo in site.  The town centre, too, is well maintained.  Not much in the way of interesting architecture apart from the remains of an abbey dating from the 11^th century  which was built on the ruins of a Roman Castellum.  Unfortunately the abbey was destroyed during the French Revolution. 

The church dates from 1870

A water tower from the old Abbey

Statues in the market square

That was all yesterday. Today it has rained all day so we are putting off the last leg of our cruise back to Diksmuide until tomorrow.
Late this afternoon the clouds drifted away and gave us this wonderful sunset