Blog

For a week we have been travelling, slowly, driving our rented boat along canals, under bridges and up and down in locks. We move a bit faster than most walkers and much slower than the bicyclists often going along the tow path. We have PLENTY of time to watch the passing villages and farms. And, we take many side trips on the 6 bikes we have on board.

Biking and barging are not as complicated as we had imagined. With six of us on board we can share various responsibilities: navigation, piloting, tying lines, paying tolls (sometimes in a wooden shoe dropped on a line to us), cooking and cleaning, etc. We have learned to be patient, too, because sometimes the bridgemaster is having lunch, or the harbormaster is having a nap. We haved learned to not honk our horn to alert the bridge-keeper, even though our captain’s handbook recommends doing so. We now approach a bridge with caution, watching for the red light to change to a red/green combination and then proceed only when it has turned green. And sometimes Dave has to make a telephone call before the bridge automatically opens or he tries to decipher the Dutch on the other end, and then a man will speed in on his bike and hand crank the bridge open.

Here are some photos of boats and below some landscapes that we enjoyed: