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Sights and Experiences in the Canals

8/17/2025

July 1998. Top and above. We were in Dinant, Belgium. We had the worst time getting money here, but we did prevail in the end. Good thing, we were down to just a few dollars. But cities like this were a common experience, too. We were constantly pinching ourselves because of the history that surrounded us.

Our American Flag was always an attention-getter. For us, it was always in a good way. We are just making our way along the canals and rivers through the heart of Belgium and France. Here we are in a small river. You can tell by the width of the waterway. Canals are typically not this wide.

One day Lori heard a gasp from below. When Carl appeared, he had absentmindedly run his shaver though his beard. Sooo, he was forced to shave his beard off. It was the first time in twenty years that Lori had seen Carl without a beard!

ABOVE and BELOW: Not only did we travel under bridges, we also went through tunnels. We're waiting behind a peniche and a small power boat. The tunnels are one-way and so that red light seen on the right side of the tunnel entrance, tells us we have to wait until the traffic coming our way clears the tunnel. They also have to pass us to carry on with their journey. Sometimes, that was hairy. Lots of vessels in a small space.

Once we got the green light, off we went. Tunnels were narrow so caution was the name of the game. Boats don't like running into brick walls. Making our way through the tunnels was a real rush!!

Truly in the canal system

8/4/2025

Summer 1998. Bridges like this are why we had to take Bijou's mast down. If we wanted to travel in the system, we needed to be "short" enough to get under them.

Typical lock. usually only a couple of boats can go at a time, and usually the "lift" or "drop" was only 10 to 20 feet.

Carl guiding Bijou into a lock. We were alone in this one. He pulls in, throws me a line which I secure to the bollards on the top of the wall. Then either a lock keeper initiates the lock action--either up or down, or we did it manually. Although the manual locks were more work for us, we liked having the control.

On manual locks Carl's job was to get Bijou safely into the lock and secure the lines to Bijou. Lori's job was to open and close the lock doors and push the button to either let the water in or out. Also she secured the lines to the bollards at the top of the wall.

In all, we did 257 locks from the Netherlands to Roanne, France, where we stopped for the winter. We often asked ourselves if this was a good idea. We saw some really outstanding things, but this trip was hard on Bijou. She was not built to be in a canal system, and she sustained damage before we finally stopped.

In many places, we could just pull alongside the canal edge and tie up. Bijou has a deep keel, which is a big disadvantage when in canals. While the center of the canal is deep, the edges often were too shallow for Bijou. When we found docks like this, it was amazing.

Crafts of all sorts cruise the canals. We were always entertained and sometimes intimidated by the huge peniches that use the canals to haul goods. They are big and squeeze us little guys to the edge. Did I mention that the edges were sometimes too shallow for us!! That's when we kept our fingers crossed that we'd get passed them without hitting bottom. In most places the bottom was cement or rock!