From Gent to Namur, first stop Deinze
Leaving Gent, our intended destination was to Namur with a view to leaving the boat there whilst we return to the UK for a brief visit. We departed from Portus Ganda in Ghent on Wednesday, 30th May – it’d been our ‘home’ for the last week or so, and it felt a bit sad to leave but there is still so much more to see and do!
Janos had decided to stay on a few more days with us (Rachel having gone back to the US on Monday) to enjoy a bit of actual cruising, and so the three of us left to join the river Leie, setting off behind ESME at 9.30, and heading toward Deinze. The wiggly, wobbly Leie (as our friend, Jenny, describes it) was exactly that – very twisty and turny, and in some places pretty narrow to say the least, but there was no commercial traffic so that was in its favour. The journey was truly lovely, beautiful banks with fabulous houses lining the river, all very picturesque.
The unusual orange lady guarding Portus Ganda 
Our first lock out of Gent
Various views of our journey down the River Leie
Just before reaching Deinze, at a little place called Astene (with a hand-operated lifting bridge) we spied a mooring alongside a small pub – perfect for a night’s stay. It turned out to be a fabulous spot, and obviously we had to visit the pub and try a local beer with Janos. There we met Wim, one of the bridge operators/publicans, who not only served us a great beer, but introduced us to his parrot (Boris), and told us that the building contained a museum dedicated to the historical manually operated bridge and to a very old Tjalk further back on the river. In the past few years there had been the threat of the bridge becoming automated, so just four volunteers had agreed to maintain and operate it. Not something to be undertaken lightly! Janos and I felt a bike ride coming on, so leaving Nicki on board we pedalled on to Deinze (about 15 minutes away) to see what the moorings would be like there, only to find Jenny and Adrian (Piedaleau) and David (Carmen) already in situ – great to know we’d have some good neighbours again.
Thursday morning we left early to get a good spot in Deinze – Nicki walked the dogs along the tow path whilst Janos and I motored down, and we all arrived at about the same time. Once we were settled, Jenny and Adrian, and David invited us to Brunos, a little Bistro close by the boats, where they were also meeting up with a few other friends including Keith and Lucrez (I hope that’s spelt correctly, but apologies if not) and David and Patricia ….. another great evening with some lovely people. We arranged to meet up again the next evening for drinks to say goodbye to Janos, as he was leaving early Saturday morning and suddenly it is just Nicki and I looking after the boat! Eeeek!!!
Saturday was a fairly quiet day, with an invitation to Keith and Lucrez’s home for drinks in the evening. What a lovely couple and so welcoming – their beautiful home was unusual in that the ‘garden’ housed numerous Sea Bright chickens bred by their daughter, a couple of horses, four dogs, and a three-legged cat!
Chickens on the left, baby chicks on the right
During the course of the evening, Keith popped out and bought strawberries from a vending machine across the road – an odd machine to come across, but utterly delicious strawberries. Another late night!
We had expected Sunday to be fairly quiet – but as seems to happen, something was just round the corner waiting for us!
Nicki came back from walking the dogs in the morning to say that ‘something to do with cars’ seemed to be going on in the main street of Deinze and we should hurry over to catch it. Well, ‘something to do with cars’ was an understatement to say the least – there was a full-on classic car rally with what seemed like hundreds of cars arriving, as well as motorbikes and trucks of all descriptions. Plus the event was combined with a 50’s theme and lots of the people there had dressed for the occasion.
It really was a spectacular day and we had such fun wandering round looking at everyone and everything … so, hope you like some of the many, many photos we took.
The people …….
Just a few of the hundreds of cars that were being displayed/parading up and down – too many to put them all here …
The motorbikes …….
Not to mention the monster trucks that edged the display …
Later, on Sunday, we also came across a public zoo-type park, filled with sheep, rabbits (Milly thought she’d gone to heaven, again), deer, goats, lots of chickens and …. STORKS.
This gave Milly and Casper their first decent walk for quite some time, although we had to rein them in whenever we came across rabbits. But they had a great time and were exhausted by the time we got back.
We had been told that water was available at the yacht haven nearby the park, and called in to see if we could fill up before we left on Tuesday. Happily that was possible, and so on Monday we cruised the short distance down river to the yacht haven, filled up, returned and relaxed, readying ourselves to move on again on Tuesday morning.