Travels with Forty Roses: Heading to Calais

The beautiful city of Bruges was a highlight this past week. We stayed at a lovely little marina within the city called Flandria. We also explored another possible over-wintering location, called the Coupure. Both locations are in the city with easy access to the busy and interesting life of Bruges. Most important is the access to an excellent train system that would allow us options during the winter. The daylight hours are wonderfully long here right now and that makes the evenings most enjoyable. Before you know it, the clock is reading 10PM. The street life is lively with residents and building summer tourism. But, despite the weekend crowds the city is accessible and beautiful and thankfully a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. And if you love chocolate, the place to visit!

Companionship of sailors on the seas was a large part of our sailing enjoyment. The same we are finding is true of barging. Fellow bargers are friendly and helpful and always willing to provide tips and pointers to newbies such as ourselves. We have survived many locks, sluis and now écluse; some automatic, some manned. Now that we are in France, the little VNF truck can be seen flying alongside the canal after providing us passage through our last écluse, heading to the next one. We have found little traffic here compared to the Dutch rivers and canals. We met possibly 3 boats on both the Canal de Bourbourg and the Canal de Calais. We did join up with Adrianna, a Dutch barge from Lisse, the land of the tulips. Dirk and Elsa have lived aboard for 28 years and raised their family on the boat. Elsa laughs when she relates her daughter's complaint as a school girl to her mates. " My room is too small," she would say to her friends, who were envious of her boat-life. Now she lives and works aboard a sea sailing ship of 50 metres that takes paying passengers and shares a tiny cabin for 4 staff with bunk beds. Now she says" Whose sock is this? " and never complains.

We arrived in Calais and parted from Adrianna, as they were turning back and heading south; the route we will take eventually toward Lille. They had been checking out the canal depths for their son who is a commercial Boat Master between the Netherlands and Belgium but wants to move his barge between Belgium and Calais. We said au revoir, but know that somewhere, someday our barge paths will cross again.

Now we prepare for the Channel crossing. We have a weather window for Sunday, May 21, and plan to take it. We have as an insurance requirement a professional skipper Chris along with John and our friend Hans. I will retire to a lovely little hotel here and enjoy Calais and its magnificent history and of course. . .worry until their safe return.