Leontyne (5 page)

So many British have passed through Calais, it's a miracle that it has retained any Frenchness at all, though once one gets away from the hypermarkets and into the smaller streets there are some very pleasant areas. We moored in a little basin not far from the famous clock tower and filled our water tanks from a stopcock we found in the grass. Luckily the pressure was very good: we needed to wash all the salt off the metal work as soon as possible, as it can be very corrosive. Counting the damage from the trip across the Channel, the only thing that had gone badly wrong was that, although we had screwed drain covers into the recessed ports down the side of the barge, we had not adequately tightened the porthole over the sink. I had thought that it wouldn't really matter, as it would just drip into the steel bowl. I was wrong. With the pounding the barge had taken coming across the Channel, enough water had been forced through this tiny crack to leave a pool an inch deep over the entire floor of the barge. By now we had managed to dry most of it up, but there was still a good deal under the floorboards and I knew it would start to rot the wood if we didn't get the boat completely dry; also, if the damp were not tackled, we might start getting electrical trouble – probably the greatest problem that a mariner can face on the canals, or so I naively thought at the time. The solution, I decided, was to get a blower heater.

The generator started easily and the blower heater was switched on. Taking the 2CV off the barge, we went for a drive around the town and did some serious shopping. One thing we needed was some of Michel Sandrin's excellent maps of the waterways of France and Belgium. They are very cleverly laid out so that they really make sense from the water, which makes it easier to estimate – barring incident – where one might get to each night. The other thing that we required was some heavy-duty cable to run an electrical supply to the radio. This consumed a lot more power than I had anticipated. It worked well whilst it was receiving signals, but as soon as I started to transmit, it activated the electronic device that gauged if there was not enough current, and the set was switched off. I wanted to fix this before we went too much further because I knew that it was essential to be able to speak to the lock-keepers at some of the bigger locks, so they knew when to expect you.

In the late afternoon we set off from Calais with just enough time to get through the first lock before it closed for the night at 7.30 p.m. Leaving Calais we passed through two automatic bridges. This was easy for us, but there was a small, plastic French boat which was having a lot of trouble, because it wasn't big enough to set off the signalling device. This required a big metal object like a barge to pass through its beam, so the skipper was very grateful to be able to follow us through. The usual bonhomie ensued, but our encounter was short-lived as he was able to go much faster than us. We soon lost sight of him as he sped down the long straight stretches of the Canal de Calais – built by Louis XIV and probably one of the oldest canals in Europe.

The first true canal lock was opened by an unusually pretty girl. Ray inquired whether this standard of pulchritude was normal, but I'm afraid I had to assure him that it was not. That night we tied up in a little town called Watten on the main canal from the coalfields of Northern France to Dunkerque. We now had the choice of whether to go north,
following the canal through Dunkerque and then along the coast to Bruges, or to go via the River Lys and St Omer to the south. I decided that the industrialization of the Dunkerque route would be a lot less pleasant than the Lys. I wanted, in any case, to have a look at the Anderton lift at Les Fontinettes.

The next morning was one of those that make any trip magic. There was mist on the canal and sun on the trees lining the bank. The local
boulangerie
supplied us with fresh croissants and away we went. The good old
Leo
was chugging along very happily and we didn't appear to have any electrical problems. Then, quite suddenly, the moment was gone. On the bank, on a crash barrier by the road which ran along the side of the canal, sat a teenage boy in obvious distress. On the road lay all the sad, telltale signs of a recent accident: oil, shards of glass. Later, when I inquired what had happened, I found that two young coach drivers, driving very close together and much too fast, resulting in one coach crashing into the back of the other, had killed seventeen people including the boy's best friend. I felt I had intruded on his grief, but we were soon gone round the bend, probably never to pass that way again. I hope he never forgets his friend.

Les Fontinettes is a massive lock with a thirteen-metre lift, which can take barges of up to 1300 tons. Before this giant was constructed, a Scots engineer called James Anderton had, in 1887, built a lift which did the same thing for the standard French barge. The barges are sealed into one of two water-filled basins which rise and fall under high-pressure hydraulic control. At first sight, one's instinct is to assume that the basin with the barge in it must be heavier than the one with just water, but in fact a boat displaces its own weight in the water, so they balance perfectly. The mayor of the district is doing his best to preserve this masterpiece of riveted steel, but no one is very interested and I'm afraid it will not be long before it is condemned as unsafe.

Ray and I took the car off and went for a trip to St Omer – a pretty little town, passed by the hordes on the motor routes without so much as a glance. The canal which used to pass through the middle of the town has been closed for a decade or two, but it is still a bit of France as it must have been before the 1939-45 war. I watched an old man buy his baguette and balance it on the handlebars of his bike whilst he did up his cycle clips, which he had taken off his trousers before going into the
boulangerie
. I wondered why it had been so important to him. Perhaps it was just habit or perhaps the woman who ran the shop had a certain twinkle in her eye. Buying bread in France is a very serious business and an anchor to the real world. In many places, the average family will buy bread twice a day, unless they shop at the local supermarket where the loaves come in a clingfilm sheath and taste of rubber.

We set off again down the wide Grand Gabarit canal, and soon realized why it had been built so wide. Coming towards us was the most enormous tow: four really massive barges pushed by a huge power unit. We crept to the side of the canal but even so there was hardly enough room for us both to pass. The strong undertow seemed to draw us on to the barges but at the last minute pushed us away again. As we passed the wheelhouse the skipper gave us a cheery wave. Palely, I fluttered my hand in return. It is much wiser to listen for the arrival of these monsters on the radio, which gives you time to find a wide place to lurk whilst they go by.

The River Lys looks a lot more enticing on the map than it is on the ground. For the first few miles it was very pretty, with quaint, old, manually operated lift-bridges and cross
éclusiers
, but soon we approached Merville, which is no more than an average industrial town in Northern France. Factories lined the banks and debris of all sorts floated on the river. We found a field outside the town, just as the sun was going down, and decided to stop. I went ashore with the
sledgehammer, drove in a couple of stakes and hitched our mooring warps over them. One of the cardinal rules about mooring anywhere on rivers or canals is always to have two lines out. I have been cursed many times for only making fast the bows, which means that when a barge goes past the undertow pulls the stern of your boat out and it bounces against the other vessel. The other golden rule is to start looking for somewhere to tie up early in the day: if you don't, you invariably end up in a really beastly place, next to a chemical plant.

We crossed the Belgian border soon after we got under way the next day. Our papers were inspected by a morose-looking gentleman who was leaving this posting, where he had been for the last twelve years, the very next day. As he was going through my papers a band of his colleagues came bounding into this sleepy little customs post. They merrily produced some bottles of Calvados and we all drank to the gloomy
douanier
who explained that the equally morose fish in the plastic bowl on the window ledge was the last surviving fish this year in the grossly polluted Lys.

Whether it was the Calvados or just plain stupidity, I made a wrong turning on the canal and had entered a lock before I realized my mistake. Coming out backwards caused a certain amount of ribald comment from the local barge community who were understandably annoyed at having to wait while this daft English boat sorted itself out. In the confusion I chatted to Freddie, a Belgian
batelier
, who was manoeuvring his barge, the
Helga
, with very considerable skill. He told me that his family had been in the
marinier
trade since the seventeenth century. He was the fifth generation and lived with his pretty wife Helga (his barge was romantically called after her) and their two children aboard their floating home. The children were having a holiday the next day so they were to be picked up in a taxi from school and brought to the barge that evening. The
Helga
was carrying 300 tons of soya pellets for cattlefeed to a distribution point near Lille. Freddie and
Helga were to arrive at their dock that evening, and were looking forward to a few days' rest before they got another cargo. They clearly had good contacts, but told me that they sometimes had to wait for up to three weeks for a cargo from a freight bureau.

I thought Armentières was worth a visit, so we stopped for a few hours. It was hard to realize that the area we were passing through so peacefully had been the battleground in almost every European war for the last two millennia. The city, flattened in the First World War, was bustling, bright, and swinging with young and extremely kissable
mademoiselles
(the original mademoiselle from Armentières won notoriety, as the song has it, by stealing a barber's pole and chopping it up for firewood). The Belgians have obviously found the secret of Common Market prosperity by providing the Market headquarters and, no doubt, collecting a sizable rent. They also manage to have more television channels than anyone else in Europe – including all the British channels for which, apparently, they pay nothing at all.

Under way again, we soon came to a halt in a long queue of barges in Dienze. A railway bridge about thirty miles ahead had been raised and the canal was to be blocked for three days. At least that is what I was told by the barge people we were moored behind. I knew from experience that nonprofessionals like ourselves never get told the truth in case they get in the queue ahead of the regular barges. I could see that we were in for a long wait, so Ray decided to go back to London for a couple of days, and as we were only six hours from Bruges, we arranged to meet there.

I went to the station to help Ray with translation and buy some stores, and when I got back to the boat, hardly two hours later, the queue of twenty barges had disappeared as if by magic.

I set off by myself the next day – something that I had promised myself not to do, but the canal to Bruges was very
wide and there was only one lock. I was also able to use the VHF radio telephone to make link calls to London. This involved having a radio operator's licence, a maritime VHF radio, and a licence for the radio. After that, providing your ship is within the range of the resident transmitter, in this case Radio Antwerp, it is relatively easy to make a call. One of the pleasant things about the system is that it takes at least six months for the bills to come through. It took quite a long time for me to be able to roll the necessary alphabet round my tongue, however. Lima Echo Oscar November Tango Yankee November Echo was how I had to spell my ship's name; Mike Alpha Delta Mike Fiver our callsign. For some reason it is usual amongst the waveband fraternity to add little flourishes to the end of certain words, like the ‘r' on the end of five.

My journey to Bruges was uneventful and took me along wide canals, the high banks on either side blocking the view of Flanders field. When the banks disappeared Bruges came into view. A once very prosperous city whose fortunes were based on the wool trade, it was preserved from developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by its parlous state. Now, because it is so astonishingly unspoiled, it is in real danger of being stared to death by the millions of tourists who flock there every year. The lace that Bruges is famous for is made in Taiwan and sold to visitors desperate for some kind of souvenir that they can buy in the five minutes they have been allowed by their tour operators for shopping. Mercifully, the vast coaches that bring these bewildered sheep are not able to get into the middle of the town because, as Art Buchwald wrote to his mother, the streets of Bruges, like those of Venice, are full of water.

I found a berth alongside a mown and grassy bank under one of the three windmills in Bruges. Charlotte and Bernard, boat dreamers from London, were there to catch my ropes and help me make fast. They had built a boat in Holland the year before, had just made their first trip over the Channel,
and were now on their way to the Mediterranean for the rest of their days. This was their plan, a dream which would almost certainly not be realized because they both had far too much energy to sit around in the sun for long periods. However it is dreams of this sort that keep boatbuilders building boats which are becoming increasingly like suburban houses. Their floating palazzo was called the
Kyamanzi
, a name from Zululand meaning a home on the water.

I found my way into Bruges through the neat little park which had so thoughtfully been provided as a mooring. As I strolled through the trees, I discovered about sixty men sitting silently on stools beside wicker baskets. It took me some time to realize that they were a group of pigeon-racing enthusiasts, awaiting the start of a race which they clearly took very seriously. I longed to ask them about their hobby, but speech would have been as much disapproved of as in the library of the Travellers' Club. Carrier pigeons were used to bring the news of the result of the Battle of Waterloo to the House of Rothschild in Paris, so I suppose the pigeons have been navigating their way through Belgium for centuries. How they find their way will always be a mystery to me.