0 locks, 5 Lift Bridges 10¼ miles, 3hours
We found a nice mooring about ½ mile from the Graven Lock Nieuwpoort. Nice in that we had steps to egress the boat, along a very minor service road but with the 100’s of cyclists, but it was other wise fine for the dogs as there was plenty of grass verges and a walk into a no cycle towpath.
Once moored up and settled I went off to visit the MH. I have a tracker in it which will respond to a phone call with its whereabouts. This hadn’t answered for the last couple of times nor had the intruder alarm. I guessed it was dead batteries and when I got there this proved to be the case. The solar on the MH is not working or not keeping up. Having had a few beers before cycling the the MH I decided to have a kip in the MH with the engine running to charge the leisure batteries. I woke about hour and a half later and the batteries were full. Now this is multitasking at its best!
The moorings were so good we decided to stay for Sunday instead of our planned move that we did today. Graham retrieved his car and we both got 65L of fuel from the local self serve.
Note the colour!
It was the turn of MR crew to do Sunday lunch. A mountain of roast lamb and traditional veg nearly had me beat, but I struggled on as you do.
While dinner was being cooked MR was visited by the local Harbour Police to check our papers.
Stolen from Jill’s blog. I have shown her how now 
Graham quickly produced his documents, the ones we got on arrival at the crane from………. The Harbour Police! I offered mine but they were satisfied I had the same and after a chat about the Belgium need to do so much paperwork (moans from the Police that is), they went on their merry way.
The next leg of the journey involved 5 lift bridges in about 3km spacing. To do this economically for the lockie’s and the traffic there are timed convoys. We joined the 2pm convoy making 5 boats. The sun was well and truly out and it was topless all the way for me and Avalon, Deb decided a spaghetti vest top was her maximum exposure.
So onwards in convoy we went. The hire boat in front of me kept me entertained with its wild wanderings and at one bridge they even rammed the wooden protection and bounced off just as hard, about 3’ hard. We had seen them get their training at the hire base and it was 500m one way then 500m the other then off you go. No wonder they were so bad entertaining.
A thoroughly pleasant afternoon’s cruise brought us the the free and so far by far the best moorings we have had here. Nice floating pontoon, free water and free electric and yet another cycle way for easy dog walking. We were half full of water so took on about 1000L.
This is the first time we have moored starboard side since being here. With water available I took the opportunity to wash the side. This seemed to start a trend with the far plastic boat doing the same a bit later on and the boat out of shot washing his outside table and chairs.
No Sky tonight. Not sure why, the view to the dot was clear. I’m hoping Sky haven’t realised our box is on the boat (not plugged into the home phone) and disabled our viewing card.
The other bit of news is me and Deb spurred on by MR crew have started the 5-2 eating plan. Today was the 1st day, although Graham remembered only after doing a fry-up for breakfast.
So far in 3 weeks we have done only done 23 engine hours. Tomorrow sees us entering our 4th week. That has gone quick!
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